A new art history, a new visual tradition, based on beads and feathers and masks
and percussion-dominated street-marchers, permeates certain neighborhoods of our
major cities. To repeat: a whole lot of shaking, drumming, chanting, feathering,
heading, multi-lappeting, and sequinning is going on. How did it happen? Immi-
.ration, mon."-Robert Farris Thompson, from the Preface
The pan-Caribbean aesthetic, with its mixture of media and themes, defines
the flavor of the Caribbean character: a blend of ethnicities, religions, and
political orientations intrinsic to the color, themes, music, and spirit of
festival arts. This lavishly illustrated volume is the first to examine the
origins and performance of this exciting art form, which is as colorful and
dynamic as its creators and participants.
224 pp., 166 illus., $39.95
Published in cooperation with the St. Louis Art Museum
To order, call toll-free 1-800-441-4115
Write for our complete list of art books and exhibition catalogues

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS
P.O. Box 50096, Seattle, WA 98145

FROM THE CIBONEY

INDIANS TO THE

TENURE OF FIDEL

Drawing on 20 years of research,
this book offers a sweeping
history of Cuba, ranging from the
Ciboney Indian settlements to the
tenure of Fidel Castro's government.
Louis Perez stresses the competing
strains of cubanidad that have run
through the course of Cuba's history-
liberal reform on the one hand and
radical nationalism on the other-
showing how this dualism has been
one of the country's principal sources
of tension. He provides an even-handed

assessment of the Castro years,
highlighting the achievements in
education and health care, as well as
the marked economic failures,
including the disastrous attempt to
wean the country from its dependence
on sugar exports.
An authoritative and vividly written
volume, Cuba: Between Reform and
Revolution will be essential reading
for anyone seeking to understand the
present turmoil in Latin America.
504 pp., $24.95

20
Getting Your Hands Dirty
Negotiating With Dictators:
The Case of Nicaragua
By Robert A. Pastor

24
Could Nicaragua
Have Been Different?
A Book Review by Richard L. Millett

48
First Impressions
Critics Look at the New Literature
Compiled by Forrest D. Colbum

52
Recent Books
On the Region and Its Peoples
Compiled by Marian Goslinga

"The US has always been ineffective
in negotiating with dictators." See p. 20

Cover
Les Brouettiers de l'avenir,
by Haitian artist, Yvan Lamothe
(60" x 49", oil on canvas, in
the collection of the artist in
Concord, New Hampshire). A
b/w photograph of his painting,
Zombie, The Gravel Maker,
appears on page 45.

Imperial State
and Revolution
The United States and
Cuba, 1952-1986
Moris H. Morley
A provocative and compelling
piece of scholarship rich in
both theory and history...
Through extensive research in
archival documents and
revealing, confidential
interviews, he demonstrates
the relentless United States
effort to manipulate, isolate,
and destroy the Cuban
Revolution."
-Thomas G. Paterson
Paperback $16.95
Cloth $59.50

Caribbean Review, a quarterly journal dedicated to the Caribbean, Latin America.
and their emigrant groups, is published by Caribbean Review, Inc., a corporation
not for profit organized under the laws of the State of Florida (Barry B. Levine,
President; Andrew R. Banks, Vice President; Kenneth M. Bloom, Secretary).
Editorial policy: to promote international education with an emphasis on
creating greater mutual understanding among the Americas, by articulating the
culture and ideals of the Caribbean and Latin America, and emigrating groups
originating therefrom. Caribbean Review does not accept responsibility for views
expressed in its pages, but rather for giving such views the opportunity to be
expressed. Our articles do not represent a consensus of opinion, some are in
open disagreement with others. No reader should be able to agree with all of them.
Copyright: Contents Copyright 1988 by Caribbean Review, Inc. The
reproduction of any artwork, editorial or other material is expressly prohibited
without written permission from the publisher.
Editorial office: Caribbean Review, Florida Intemational University, Miami,
Florida 33199. Phone: (305) 554-2246. Fax: (305) 284-1019. Unsolicited manu-
scripts should be accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope. Concurrent
submission on 5 1/4" DOS compatible disks (preferably in ASCII) is helpful.
Subscription office: Carbbean Review, Box 1370, Miami, FL 33265. Rates
- In the US, PR, USVI, Canada, for individuals: 1 year, $20; 2 years, $38; 3
years, $54; for institutions: 1 year, $25; 2 years, $48; 3 years, $69. In the
Caribbean, Central America, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela: 1 year, $22; 2
years, $42; 3 years, $60. In South America and Europe (except Colombia and
Venezuela): 1 year, $25; 2 years, $48; 3 years, $69. Elsewhere: 1 year, $28; 2
years, $54; 3 years, $78. Overseas subscriptions are shipped by air. Invoicing
Charge: $7.50. Subscription agencies, please take 15%. Back Issues: $8.50 each.
Mircrofilm and microfiche copies are available from University Microfilms; 300 North
Zeeb Road; Ann Arbor, MI. 48106.
Photocopying: Permission to photocopy is granted by Caribbean Review,
Inc. for intemal or personal use of libraries and others registered with the Copyright
Clearance Center (CCC), provided that the stated fee of $1.00 per copy is paid
directly to CCC, 21 Congress Street, Salem, MA 01970.
Syndication: Caribbean Review articles have appeared in other media in
English, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. Editors, write for details.
Index: Our articles are annotated and indexed in America: History and Life;
Current Contents of Periodicals on Latin America; Development and Welfare Index;
Hispanic American Periodicals Index; Historical Abstracts; International Bibli-
ography of Book Reviews; International Bibliography of Periodical Literature;
International Development Abstracts; Intemational Serials Database (Bowker); New
Periodicals Index; Political Science Abstracts; PAIS Bulletin; United States Political
Science Documents; and Universal Reference System.
International Standard Serial Number: ISSN 0008-6525; Library of Congress
Classification Number: AP6 C27; Library of Congress Card Number: 71-16267;
Dewey Decimal Number: 079.7295.
Production: Typography and design using SuperPage II by The Bell Mount
Company, Box 560577, Miami, FL 33256. Printing by Imperial Printing,
501 Colonial Drive, St. Joseph, M 49085.

Moore, a contemporary of Langston Hughes,
Marcus Garvey, and other Afro-American writers,
artists and politicians who made Harlem their
home in the 1920s, was a key figure in the devel-
opment and expression of radical politics during
and after the Harlem Renaissance.
Blacks in the Diaspora
$57.50

Even Haiti sheltered by pov-
erty, cloistered by corruption,
shrouded in violence even
Haiti will someday see the autumn of
the patriarch. Perhaps Leslie Manigat
could not engineer the transition, per-
haps the sergeants and corporals at the
base of the mid-September 1988 politi-
cal moves will not be able to either.
But someday "success will come."
This affirmation that "success will
come," made by Manigat's foreign
minister, G6rard Latortue [see inter-
views, page 8], is based on a belief that
the international reality of moderniza-
tion will eventually force the end of the
traditional thuggery that has until now
passed for government in Haiti.
All attempts at overcoming Haitian
patriarchialism begin with the army.
The army either has to be beaten with
like forces, which has always seemed
more than improbable, or it has to be
infiltrated from within and turned around.
I suspect that only the latter will
work and even then there is a high
probability of temporary nonsolutions.
("The Caribbean Cover," the demo-
cratic facades that exist in Panama and
Suriname may be better than the lack
of facades in Cuba and Paraguay, but
the military forces of Panama and
Suriname have yet to be put into their
proper places.) How and when the
Haitian military will finally take its
proper role in a modern Haiti is what
the contemporary history of that nation
will be all about.
In this issue of Caribbean Review,
we focus on the Manigat months in
office. The question is: "How does one
judge the period of government under
Leslie Manigat?" Subsequent events
will affect that judgement. Should things
turn brighter and Haiti move toward
democracy, will his government be
judged an insignificant footnote to that
process or an important footstep that
helped to demonstrate the proper path?
As this is being rewritten (a third

time, as we vainly struggle to keep up
with events), Haitian general Prosper
Avril has now ousted General Henri
Namphy, whose then-allies (including
Avril) had ousted Manigat, who in turn
had himself unsuccessfully attempted
to oust Namphy. Avril did so at the
demand of younger officers apparently
sick of the murderous activities that
flourished once again when Namphy
took back overt control.
The emerging bases for legitimacy
demand that democratic government
be at least the stated goal of any
newcomers to power. Namphy's claim
that democracy was unnecessary or
unworkable in contemporary Haiti now
appears as simply crude and vulgar.
But Prosper Avril has too many years
of association with the Duvaliers to
allow one not to be skeptical of his
ultimate intentions. Nobody ever ac-
cused Avril of having Haiti's interest
at heart before. Times however are
changing. The bases for claims to legiti-
macy have shifted General Avril
used the new vocabulary.
Should the younger officers not be
able to infiltrate the Haitian high com-
mand and restructure the army's activi-
ties (not unlike what Manigat had hoped
to do) then the Manigat months as well
as the recent moves by the younger
officers will be but two of many at-
tempts at democratization deemed nec-
essary before "success will come."
Should the younger officers not be
trying to change the way the army
command treats ordinary Haitians, or
should they be satisfied with simply
changing the way the army command
treats themselves, then Manigat's at-
tempt will stand alone until another
comes to the fore. But, sooner or later,
another attempt will come.
When Manigat came to power blan-
keted in the suspected elections of
January 17th, many observers felt a
shared dilemma. Do you judge him on
the rigor of his entry to the presidency

or on the results of what he might
accomplish.
This is the same dilemma posed by
the great political sociologist, Max
Weber, in his essay, "Politics as a
Vocation." Weber argued that, espe-
cially in politics, there are two opposing
ethics: an ethics of intention and an
ethics of responsibility. Weber argued
against a colleague who proposed that
"from good comes only good, but from
evil only evil follows." To naively
follow a naked ethics of intention is for
Weber to be a "political infant."
Weber set three criteria for positive
politics: a practical nonrevolutionary
commitment to a cause, a feeling of
responsibility and a sense of proportion.
Critical for Weber in the mature politi-
cian is "the trained relentlessness in
viewing the realities of life, and the
ability to face such realities and to
measure up to them inwardly." When
Leslie Manigat came to power I was
willing to give him the Weberian bene-
fit of the doubt. And, until I see
evidence to the contrary, I still am.
Obviously, others do not share my
view. Yet, under different circumstances,
many of those critical of Manigat had
used an ethics of responsibility defense
to support Maurice Bishop's rise to
power. Unfortunately, contemporary so-
cial scientists frequently hide behind
aprons of formality and procedure to
avoid talking about ideology.
Manigat's worst crime may be that
he failed. If Manigat's ouster demon-
strated that he never quite had the
Continued on page 47

Barry B. Levine is the
editor and cofounder of
Caribbean Review. His
last book, The Carib-
bean Exodus, an an-
thology, was published
by Praeger in 1987. The
views expressed here
are his own and are not necessarily shared
by the other contributors to the issue.

CARIBBEAN REVIEW

Transition to Nowhere

How Haiti's Democratic Transition Might Have Worked
By Jorge Heine

n mid-morning on 20 June 1988,
shortly after Lt. General Henri
Namphy had read the official state-
ment announcing the military govern-
ment that had deposed Leslie Manigat,
the commander of the Leopards (the
Haitian army's special forces) and Colo-
nel Jean-Claude Paul found themselves
face to face in front of the Casernes
Dessalines, commanded by the latter.
After a moment's vacillation, they both
stepped forward and embraced, receiv-
ing a round of applause from the
surrounding troops as well as many
calls of "a vie, a vie."
The Namphy government in fact did
not last the lifetime of the military
strongman. But there is little doubt that
as few other events in those hectic days
in June, that embrace in Port-au-Prince
signaled the end of one period of
Haitian history and the beginning of
another. The Leopards had provided the
main support behind Namphy's move
to oust President Manigat; many thought
they would have to fight it out with
Jean-Claude Paul's men in the streets
around the National Palace. But nothing
of the sort happened. The armed forces
stood solidly behind Namphy as he
proceeded to announce an all-military
government with no program, no time-
table for elections, and no pretense of
gearing up for anything other than what
the army has always done in Haiti:
pilfer the country openly and systemati-
cally. The process of ddchoukaj ("uproot-
ing" in Creole) that started on 7 Febru-
ary 1986 with the departure of Jean-
Claude Duvalier had finally come to a
tragically disappointing end.
Over and above the questions raised
by this sudden ending of Leslie Mani-
Jorge Heine teaches political science at UPR,
MayagOez. His latest book, coedited with
Leslie Manigat is The Caribbean and World
Politics: Cross Currents and Cleavages.

gat's presidency, Haiti's failed transi-
tion from authoritarian to democratic
rule raises many other broader issues.
What were the dynamics of the Haitian
transition, and why was the movement
for democratization, which seemed in
full swing in mid-1987, ultimately de-
railed? Was the Manigat government
essentially "Duvalierism without Duval-
ier" as so many said, and Baby Doc
himself seemed to confirm in a press
conference after the January 17th elec-
tions? What was the responsibility of
Haitian political parties in this inability
to bring ddchoukaj to a successful
ending?

Transitions and Transactions

Transitions from authoritarian rule have
been found to be marked by a number
of common features. They are highly
abnormal, in the sense of being perme-

ated by extraordinary uncertainty. In
such a context unexpected events, hur-
ried choices, and considerable confu-
sion about motives and interests all play
an important role. Within the authoritar-
ian regime, a distinction has to be made
between the hardliners, who will resist
moves toward liberalization and democ-
ratization, and the softliners, who are
more willing to accommodate a politi-
cal opening. In the opposition camp,
one must differentiate between maxi-
malists, moderates and opportunists.
During a process in which the rules of
the political game are not defined, it is
from the interaction among these key
political actors that much of the pro-
gress toward democratization will de-
pend. (For evidence on this point, based
on case studies drawn from Latin Amer-
ica and Southern Europe, see Guillermo
O'Donnell, Philippe Schmitter and Lau-
rence Whitehead, Transitions from
Authoritarian Rule [Baltimore: Johns

4/CARIBBEAN REVIEW

Lt. Gen. Henri Namphy upon retaking control.

Hopkins University Press, 1986].)
Haiti's unique social formation has
tended to obscure the elements it has
in common with other such processes,
particularly in Latin America. As a
result, much of the commentary on the
Haitian transition has been either of a
highly deterministic character, taking
the frustration of the free and fair
elections promised by the ruling junta
as a foregone conclusion, or of a moral
tone, the thrust of which is to denounce
the constitutional and human rights
violations of the military government.
Such commentaries fail to provide a
satisfactory explanation of the Haitian
political process because they ignore
the indeterminacy of transitions and the
role played in them by statecraft. More-
over, by focusing only on the behavior
of the military, such commentaries pro-
vide only a partial picture of Haitian
reality. An approach centered on the
strategic interaction between the various
political actors provides a much better
explanation for the dynamics of the
transition and its outcome.
From March 1986 to June 1987, the
provisional government and the myriad
political parties, professional associa-
tions and popular organizations that
bloomed in the wake of Baby Doc's
departure coexisted in an uneasy rela-
tionship. In its appointments and poli-
cies, the National Council of Govern-
ment (CNG) seemed to be searching for
a compromise between the radical de-
Duvalierization demanded by vast sec-
tors of the population and the pressures
to keep things pretty much as they had
always been from the more recalcitrant
Duvalierists. As a rule, though, the
CNG, and particularly General Nam-
phy, was singularly uncommunicative.
As tends to happen in such processes,
the electoral timetable soon came to
dominate the public debate, setting the
agenda and the priorities of the various
political forces. The CNG, reiterating
time and again its commitment to the
reestablishment of democracy, produced
a detailed time table, contemplating the
election of a constitutional assembly to
draft a new constitution, a referendum
to ratify the proposed text, and the
holding first of local elections and later
of presidential ones, in November 1987.
Despite the often tense relationship
between a military government unwill-
ing to explain its actions and a large
number of political parties and social
forces that continued to rely much more
on mobilization than on dialogue and

consensus-building to achieve their ob-
jectives, Haiti's democratization proc-
ess seemed to be set on a relatively firm
course. Extraordinarily rapid progress
was made in achieving the various
objectives set forth in the time table.
Elections for the constitutional as-
sembly took place in October 1986.
Most politicians of any stature skipped
these elections, concentrating on gear-
ing up for the upcoming presidential
elections instead. As a result, voter
turnout was a mere 5% of the electorate,
and the assembly was made up of
mostly unknown, inexperienced people
having little background in political
give and take.
Spurred on by the support of the
National Congress of Haitian Demo-
cratic Movements (an umbrella organi-
zation of grass-roots groups), which
met in Port-au-Prince in January 1987,
the constitutional assembly approved
Haiti's 23rd and most liberal constitu-
tion. It was ratified by 99% of the
electorate in a 29 March referendum,
in which half of the eligible voters took
part. The independent electoral council
mandated by the constitution assembled
formally on 14 May and started to lay
the groundwork for the upcoming elec-
tions. From the estimated 100 presiden-
tial candidates who had been criss-
crossing the country in 1986, the field
was winnowed down to the more man-
ageable number of 23 by November
1987.
The second half of 1987, however,
was tragically disappointing. In June
the CNG dissolved the electoral council
upon the latter's refusal to have its
decisions reviewed by the Supreme
Court. This action plunged the provi-
sional government into its worst crisis,
intensified by the simultaneous announce-
ment of the dissolution of the CATH
(Autonomous Confederation of Haitian
Workers), Haiti's largest union. The
quick and highly effective response of
the opposition forces was to call for
massive demonstrations and strikes
throughout the country. For three weeks,
as Haiti came to a standstill, many
seemed to be reliving the heady days
of Duvalier's ouster. Strong pressures
demanding respect for the constitution
from Washington and elsewhere were
also felt.
In the end the CNG gave in and
restored the electoral council, but this
did not return the country to its prior
condition. Political violence increased
at an almost feverish pitch. It took the

lives of 300 peasants in Jean Rabel in
July, of presidential candidates Louis
Athis (in August) and Yves Volel (in
October), and of countless other people
in the days leading up to 29 November.
The local elections scheduled for August
had to be canceled because the govern-
ment refused to fund them. On 29
November Tonton Macoutes and sol-
diers killed an officially estimated 34
people who were attempting to vote
(unofficial estimates of the number of
victims are as high as 300). Unable to
guarantee the security of voters, the
electoral council had to call off the
presidential elections at 10 o'clock in
the morning. The CNG immediately
dissolved the council and appointed a
new one, totally subservient to the
provisional government, after various
organizations (such as the churches,
universities and unions) refused to sub-
mit new names to replace the original
council members. The subsequent, highly
irregular elections of 17 January were
boycotted by the leading political forces
and the overwhelming majority of the
electorate.

The Interregnum

Despite the irregularities of the 17
January elections and the degree to
which they were manipulated by the
CNG, the perspective of Puerto Rican
lawyer Marco Rigau, long involved in
Haitian affairs, that "the worst possible
process ended up bringing out by far
the best man" was widely shared in the
relatively small circle of foreign observ-
ers who follow Haitian political devel-
opments. There is little doubt that in
terms of sheer intelligence, formal edu-
cation, eloquence and willpower, Leslie
Manigat stood above the rest of the
presidential contenders. Those of us
who have worked with him as col-
leagues never failed to be impressed
by his raw intellectual power, the way
he can generate floods of ideas in
seemingly effortless bursts of creativity.
Whatever his abilities as a student
and practitioner of politics, however,
Leslie Manigat had much against him
as he took office as Haiti's 45th presi-
dent on 7 February 1988. Most of all
was the very nature of the 17 January
elections, whose dubious character weak-
ened his hand enormously both with the
military, who felt he was indebted to
them, and with the democratic forces,
who felt betrayed by his decision to

CARIBBEAN REVIEW/

run. His party, the Rassemblement des
Democrats National Progressistes
[RDNP National Democratic Pro-
gressive Rally], is relatively small. Haiti's
newly approved constitution weakened
considerably the powers of the presi-
dency and transferred much of it to the
two houses of parliament, where Duval-
ierists posing as independents had in
fact won a majority in the 17 January
elections.
Despite these handicaps, Manigat
moved swiftly to get the country going
again. He appointed a civilian cabinet
(with the exception of former CNG
member Maj. General Williams Regala,
who took over the Defense portfolio),
including some of the best Haitian
professionals to be found at home and
in the diaspora. He started to deal with
the long-simmering issue of Haitian
sugarcane workers in the Dominican
Republic. He proclaimed his govern-
ment's medium-term goal to be "one
meal a day" for every Haitian man,
woman and child, and started to lay the
groundwork for rebuilding the coun-
try's infrastructure and for arresting the
process of land erosion that has so
badly damaged Haiti's agricultural pro-
duction. Considerable progress was made
in advancing Haiti's candidacy to join
the Lom6 Treaty.
The Manigat government, however,
soon found itself embroiled in a highly
damaging controversy after a Miami
jury indicted Colonel Jean-Claude Paul
on drug-running charges, and the United
States formally demanded Paul's extra-
dition. Overlapping with the crisis in
Panama and with the emergence of drug
smuggling as the single most important
foreign-policy issue in the concerns of
US public opinion, the indictment ef-
fectively precluded any possibility of
resuming US aid, which had been cut
off after the 29 November election-day
massacre. Democrats in the US Con-
gress took a harsher line against the
Manigat government than had ever been
taken against the Duvaliers, introducing
a bill (the Fascell-Graham-Fauntroy Bill,
HR 4152) that would have, among
other things, cut off Haiti's trading
privileges with the United States under
the CBI, GSP, and sections 806 and
807 of the US Tax Code.
At home, with the exception of MOP
leader Gdrard Phillippe Auguste, who
accepted the Agriculture portfolio in
Manigat's cabinet, and of personalities
like Frangois Latortue and Gregorie
Eugene, who sought an accommodation

with the government, the vast majority
of the leadership of the major political
forces continued to deny any legitimacy
to the Manigat government. Not only
did they refuse overtures to join the
government, they even refused to per-
form the role of a more-or-less loyal
opposition. It is in this context that the
crisis culminating in the 19 June coup
has to be examined.
Once Colonel Jean-Claude Paul came
to complain about reassignment from
his command of the Casernes Dessal-
ines to a largely administrative post at
army headquarters, as part of a sweep-
ing reorganization of the army ordered
by Namphy, Manigat sided with Paul
and ordered Namphy to stop any such
changes. The encounter culminated with

the ouster of Namphy as Commander-in-
Chief of the Armed Forces (a post to
which he had appointed himself for
three years in November 1987). But
contrary to much of what has been
reported, it was not the ouster of Nam-
phy per se that triggered the coup, but
subsequent measures taken by Manigat,
providing for a sweeping reorganization
of the army high command, including
the appointment of a colonel, Morton
Gousse, as new Commander-in-Chief,
thus passing over all serving generals,
and the reassignment of many younger
officers like Captain Henri Robert Marc-
Charles. Under the instigation of old-
time Duvalierist General Prosper Avril,
these younger officers, in conjunction
with a number of noncommissioned
officers, urged Namphy to break his
house arrest and seize power. The rest
is history.

What Went Wrong?

The June 1987 events, then, had marked
a crucial turning point. Despite many
difficulties, considerable progress in the
country's democratization had been made
until that moment. After the junta's
encounter with the electoral council, it
was all downhill. The 29 November
massacre was only the culmination of
the extensive political violence that had
gripped the country during the summer
and fall.
The humiliating defeat inflicted by
the democratic forces on the ruling
junta as they forced the restoration of
the electoral council thus turned out to
be a Pyrrhic victory. Depending on
donations from foreign governments for
its budget (an absurd situation) and
without means for enforcing its deci-
sions, the council's ultimate impotence
in the face of the government's lack of
collaboration and unmitigated hostility
was tragically exposed by the 29 No-
vember events.
The derailment of Haiti's democrati-
zation process is thus closely associated
with the military's desire to control the
elections. But such an attitude is hardly
unique to the Haitian military govern-
ment; it is, in fact, a constant of all
military regimes taking steps toward
liberalization and democratization. It
was, in short, predictable behavior. How
did the various democratic forces and
organizations deal with it? The crucial
matter of the electoral council's powers
reflects the extraordinarily inept way
both the CNG and the political party
leadership dealt with the vital task of
setting the rules for playing the game
during such fluid periods.
The Haitian transition from authori-
tarianism was thrown off course by the
enormous gap that emerged in the
summer of 1987 between the electoral
council, the body endowed with rule-
making powers for the electoral contest,
and the CNG, which continued to wield
state power. A totally independent body
made up of representatives of private
organizations that was empowered to
exercise uncontested authority over all
electoral matters may have embodied a
wonderful constitutional ideal. In real-
ity, it failed to consider the interests of
those who were supposed to fund it and
enforce its decisions in this case, the
military government. The extraordinary
Continued on page 26

6/CARIBBEAN REVIEW

The Little Game of January 17th

By Jean-Claude Bajeux

n the month of February 1986, at
the time of "d6choukaj," all the
elements seemed to be in place for
basic changes in Haitian society. The
blossoming of associations of all kinds
throughout the country, the linguistic
revolution which imposed the use of
Creole on the political scene, the dis-
gust provoked by the dictatorship's 30
years of abuse, the mobilization of the
masses through the churches, the free
expression of the media especially radio
and television: all this seemed to con-
tradict the thesis expressed many times
by the president of the National Council
of Government (CNG), General Nam-
phy, that "democracy is not for today,
not even for tomorrow."
The first error of the "democratic
movement" was not to take seriously
these statements by the highest ranking
member of the Haitian army who,
speaking thus, was talking not only for
the military or for the club of those
with privileges old and new who have
shared power since the 1804 independ-
ence of Haiti, but also for some foreign
observers and participants, always ready
to affirm that "a people who cannot
read cannot practice democracy."
Were we seeing in Haiti, as of
February 1986, a Portuguese-style proc-
ess in which part of the army would
openly align with the demands of the
people or an Argentine-like process in
which a democratically elected presi-
dent would be able to negotiate the
cleaning up?
The astonishing demonstration on 7
November 1986, when about 250,000
people demanded justice for Charlot
Jacquelyn [a "disappeared" Church lit-
eracy worker], the Congress of Konakom
Jean-Claude Bajeux is director of the Ecu-
menical Center for Human Rights in Port-au-
Prince. This essay was first written in early
June before the Manigat government was
overthrown.

(the National Congress of Haitian Demo-
cratic Movements) of 31 January 1987,
reuniting 800 delegates from all over
the country, and the referendum for the
constitution which mobilized 1,280,000
people who voted "yes" in impeccable
order could lead one to foresee that the
determination of the Haitian people to
exercise its right to vote, and through
this right, to start a democratic society,
could not be stopped.
The events that took place from 23
June 1987 to 17 January 1988 demon-
strated the opposite.
One must re-emphasize the immense
misunderstanding that was cultivated
after the departure of Jean-Claude Duval-
ier on 7 February 1986. Certainly,
different factors made this event possi-
ble: popular discontent with the sump-
tuous purchases of the Bennett clique
while the peasants' black pigs were
being exterminated; the consciousness
that was developed through radio and
church groups; the impact of the human

rights movement coming simultaneously
from Carter, Andrew Young and Pope
John Paul II; together with an internal
plot by the old Duvalierists and the
military to get rid of Jean-Claude Duval-
ier and the Bennetts before it was too
late. This attitude was adopted at the
last moment by the US administration.
The provisional government set up
by the Duvalierists, the military and the
Americans used, at the beginning, some
highly regarded personalities to gain
respectability. But very quickly, with
the resignation of Gerard Gourgue, a
Minister of Justice, in March 1986, a
hardening took place. The CNG became
a "military" government, whose first
worry was to protect the interests of the
military and the Duvalierists, and who
for two years skillfully maneuvered the
Americans not only into providing aid
and backing, but mainly into operating
a transmission of power in which the
so-called elected would, in fact, be
Continued on page 27

Leslie Manigat, the recently
deposed president of Haiti,
and Gerard Latortue, the min-
ister offoreign affairs in the Mani-
gat government, are no strangers
to Caribbean Review readers.
Manigat is on our board of editors
and he and his wife both have
written for the journal. Latortue's
relationship to Caribbean Review
is an old one dating back to the
journal's founding in Puerto Rico
in the late 1960s when he and Basil
Ince (who was also to become a
foreign minister [of Trinidad and
Tobago]) were the journal's first
associate editors.
For me, the rise of Manigat and
Latortue to government in Haiti,
although somewhat unexpected, held
within it the possibility of better
days for that beleaguered nation.
Their ouster, after only four months
in power, by the commanders of
Haiti's military was followed by the
routine reappearance of street vio-
lence. Three months later, in mid-
September 1988, the government
changed again, this time with the
promise that democracy will even-
tually be restored.
Manigat and Latortue were inter-
viewed in late June shortly after
they were deposed, Manigat was in
Miami en route to Rome, Latortue
was in San Juan en route to Vienna.
Barry B. Levine

Leslie F. Manigat

BBL: What I want to demonstrate is
what went wrong and what could
have possibly been different. I believe
that since the 1982 repression of
Poland's Solidarity movement, every-

body knows (or is either deliberately
tendentious or hopelessly naive) that
you must change or neutralize the
army to change a country. Lech
Walesa had all the popular support
in the world and couldn't do it,
because he couldn't change the Polish
army. A critical element, then, is
always the army. What was in your
mind when you took over the presi-
dency, especially vis-a-vis the army?

LFM: When I decided to go to the
elections I published a communique
that explained my reasons. I said that I
was going to take a calculated risk.
When someone says publicly that he is
going to take a calculated risk, he
knows that there is a threat, that there
is a danger, but he says that he can
meet the threat.
It was obvious from the very begin-
ning that we had to play a difficult and
dangerous game with some of the lead-
ing army officers, I don't want to say
with the army as a whole. I don't think
that the army as an institution is solidly
behind these few officers.
I had to represent, in power, the
supremacy of the civilian power over
the military institution. It is the essen-
tial heart of the problem. While in
government, everything we did, we did
with the clear awareness that in doing
so we were willing to confront powerful
military officers, in doing so we were
going to challenge these officers, in
doing so we were going to make certain
military leaders unhappy. We had to
do it, so we did it.
From the very beginning we had
people from abroad, self-famous schol-
ars and politicians speculating in-
stead of analyzing that we were
puppets of the army. But the army knew
that we were not puppets because they
were not even consulted in matters

concerning the government. We were
the government, taking decisions in
cabinet meetings and they had nothing
to do with our decisions except when
it related to them.

BBL: Why did the army even trust
you in the first place, or take a
chance with you?

LFM: Because at that time I became
for them unavoidable. By election day,
the 17th of January, I had become the
most important candidate. The other
four who were supposed to be as
important as I decided to abstain. I
called them and told them, "If we are
many competing in the race, the course
of democracy will be strengthened."
The issue was not my own personal
behavior and success, rather the success
of the democratic way, the process of
democratization. They did not under-
stand it. They preferred to abstain, so I
became unavoidable.
What happened is interesting: I never
signed or agreed on any commitment
with the army. Never. Even Regala,
after my election said "That's strange
when I realize that you have no com-
mitment to us." I said, "Yes, that's
so." Regala was intelligent so he de-
cided to accept my line of policy or to
play at accepting it while Namphy
became the center of criticism against
the government.
From the very beginning when we
decided, for example, how to make up
the cabinet, Namphy was unhappy. He
wanted to see people from the old
regime. He said "There's nobody rep-
resenting the older sectors, from be-
fore." I said, "Yes, all our people are
new, all of them are democrats. They
were not associated with the Duvalier
regime, that was our condition, and they
are competent and honest."

8/CARIBBEAN REVIEW

When we started initiating reforms
Namphy was not very happy because
we were putting out of office corrupt
civil servants that served under him and
many of whom were his friends. They
were dismissed without hesitation. He
realized that we were not going to obey
or consult him.
He was unhappy when we started the
fight against smuggling and contraband.
Many officers were involved in smug-
gling and we knew that.
What happened is quite clear to me.
Unavoidable, permanent, constant con-
frontation with some army officers which
led to the final confrontation, the final
showdown when Namphy decided, uni-
laterally decided, to bring change in the
army without consulting me or inform-
ing me.

BBL: When Jean-Claude Paul came
to you and said that Namphy was
trying to remove him...

LFM: He showed me the written mes-
sage. I said, "Well, I am not aware of
that." He said "You don't know?" I
said, "No." "You did not give the
order?" "Absolutely not" "In that
case since you are the constitutional
president and the head of the armed
forces this is null, it has no value." I
said, "For me, this order does not
exist."

BBL: That gave the perception that
you were siding with Jean-Claude
Paul in order to create a split in the
army.

LFM: No, not at all, because I took it
as a question not just about Paul but
about the right of every army officer.
People are concentrating on Paul be-
cause the Americans are interested in
Paul. But it was not about Paul. The
head of the air forces of the country
was also moved. I decided to put him
back. Why didn't people speak about
him, why only Paul? A colonel from
the police was removed and sent into
retirement. I put him back into active
service. Why don't they speak about
him? People have their own interests,
their own perspective. They have the
wrong approach to Haitian reality. What
was at stake for me was the principle
of the supremacy of the civilian power
over the military. That principle was
violated by General Namphy; I revoked
his decision.
Continued on page 28

ILeslie Manigat (Photo: Phillippe Diederich)

G6rard R. Latortue

BBL: What did Leslie have in mind
when he accepted the deal with the
army to become president?

GRL: I don't think there was an offer
to become president Among all the
candidates who agreed to run in the
January 17th election, Namphy and
maybe the military establishment did
have a preference for Leslie. And Leslie
thought, as a political analyst, in order
to get in power in Haiti there is no way
not to make a compromise with the
army. He mentioned that in his Decem-
ber 13th message to the nation, saying
that in a country like Haiti there is
nothing you can do without the army
not to say against it
He thought of the army as a kind of
grand electeur. It was a plus for him,
the same way that some people were
trying to get the Church (as an institu-
tion it was also extremely powerful at
times) behind them, or other candidates
who would like to get the private sector
behind them. The problem was that
among the major decision-making insti-
tutions or groups, the army, the Church
and the private sector represented some
very powerful pressure groups. Leslie
had one of them with him. For him it
was positive. And he thought the prob-
lem was not how you get into power,
but what you will do when you are in
power.

BBL: What did he have in mind to
do once he was elected?

GRL: If you review all his articles, the

program of his party, the RDNP, he had
in mind two basic objectives. One was
to alleviate poverty in Haiti: to help the
poorest of the poor Haitians get a better
life; to see that each Haitian could have
at least one meal a day. The second
objective was to create conditions that
would permit democracy to flourish, to
make sure that there would be no more
arbitrary arrests, no violation of human
rights, no torture, no killing to make
sure human rights would be respected
and start the process of democratization
in Haiti. In brief, to make sure we could
create the conditions in Haiti to make
people respect life.

BBL: But to start the process of
democratization he had to go against
the army, the very people who put
him in power?

GRL: He had some basic ideas on how
to modernize the army and how to get
the army involved in the development
and democratization processes. He knew
it was not the kind of work that could
have been done overnight, and that it
would be a long process, and that it
might not be accomplished during his
term of office. But if we started maybe
his successor will come and continue
the work and one day we would have
an army that would be strongly in-
volved in the development and democ-
ratization processes. Maybe it was a
hope or a dream but he really thought
he could do it.

BBL: Did he have in mind the idea
Continued on page 32

CARIBBEAN REVIEW/9

A Poor King Without a Crown

A Review of the Haitian Press During the Manigat Months
By Bernard Diederich

After the secretive Duvalier years,
during which the media was
molded into little more than a
mascot of the dictatorship, and two
free-wheeling years under abusive mili-
tary rule, Haiti's media entered the ring
with a professional heavyweight when
they encountered President Leslie F.
Manigat during three bouts in the Na-
tional Palace's Salon des Bustes, on 21
April, 19 May and 16 June 1988. The
press conferences took place in a con-
text in which Haitians had developed
an aversion to rhetoric, having just been
through an era when words lost their
meaning and truth was pilloried daily.
Although the media was aggressive,
it was handicapped by a lack of training
and experience. In the first round, after
a verbal bashing in French by Manigat,
some members of the media began
pulling their punches and a few even
threw in the towel. Each side was
uncomfortable with the other's style.
While both sides polished their ap-
proaches, the contest at least ensured
an audience.
Manigat's style contrasted greatly with
that of the National Council of Govern-
ment, which cloaked most of its moves
in mafia-like silence. He launched his
tenure with kozi Anba Tonal (talking
to the people in a tropical setting under
a Haitian-style gazebo), and followed
with the monthly press conference and
speeches to the nation. No Haitian
president began his administration with
such a media blitz, but none had such
a need to explain himself as did Mani-
gat, who was handicapped by a heavy
residue of hostility and suspicion stem-
ming from the 17 January vote.
Bernard Diederich published and edited The
Haiti Sun from 1950-1963. He is the author
of individual biographies of Papa Doc, Trujillo
and Somoza, available in English, French
and Spanish editions.

The veteran academician worked the
press conference in much the same
manner as he commanded academic
classrooms and conferences most of his
adult life. Intellectually he soared high
above the average interrogator, espe-
cially in French, but flying high made
him vulnerable to outdistancing his
audience.
The second presidential press confer-
ence marked Manigat's first 100 days
in office. For well over an hour he
sparred with the media in Creole, en-
deavoring to to keep this round centered
on his "achievements," but reporters
kept jabbing again and again at the
climate of insecurity reigning in Haiti,
a subject foremost in the minds of most
Haitians at the beginning of May. Mani-
gat tempered his combative, confronta-
tional style, saying that he sought un-
derstanding and good faith, and swear-
ing he held no grudge against the
media.

How Free Was the Press

A delegation from the Interamerican
Press Association (IAPA) visited Haiti
17 and 18 March 1988 and talked with
President Manigat, newspaper and radio
editors, and others about freedom of the
press. The delegation concluded that
while the media in general were freer
then, than they had been during the 30
years of Duvalier dictatorship, there
were still reasons for concern about
press freedom in Haiti. Some of their
observations follow.
When Jean-Claude Duvalier fled Haiti
in February 1986, the media, like Hai-
tians in general, assumed that they had
there and then achieved democracy.
They acted accordingly. Haitian pub-
lishers, radio- and TV-station directors,
opposition leaders and officials all agree

that there was, in fact, almost total
freedom. Many observers also add that,
at times, reporting was irresponsible
and based on rumor and unsubstantiated
charges.
The National Council of Government
had its own ideas about the media. In
July 1986 it revoked some of the
repressive Duvalier measures but issued
a press decree of its own that included
serious restrictions on press freedom.
This decree, which continued in effect
during the Manigat months, recognized
the right of information as an attribute
of any democratic society but then
went on to lay down ground rules "to
avoid any abuses which could result
from this right." The decree gave every
Haitian the right to participate in jour-
nalism but imposed requirements such
as a university degree. Other provisions
required the declaration of news sources,
demanded annual accreditation for both
local and foreign journalists, and im-
posed vague prohibitions such as those
against news that might undermine the
morals of children or disturb public
morality and order.
Most news organizations and journal-
ists felt threatened by the armed forces
after a communique in February 1988
by the high command "inviting" them
not to reprint, in the absence of any
proof, allegations in the foreign press
about the alleged involvement in drug
dealings of Col. Jean-Claude Paul, com-
mander of the Dessalines Battalion which
garrisons Port-au-Prince. When a Mi-
ami grand jury issued an indictment
against Col. Paul for "conspiracy,"
several radio stations carried the foreign
dispatch with the news, but only one,
Radio Soleil, dared to give his name.
The delegation heard evidence that Col.
Paul had personally threatened radio
journalists.
All this had a chilling effect, as had

10/CARIBBEAN REVIEW

a communique by Manigat's Informa-
tion Minister Roger Savain warning the
media against publishing "unverified
news" appearing in the foreign press.
Abusing press freedom, he further
warned, could be punished under the
terms of the criminal code. Members
of the Association des Journalistes
Haitiens charged that the minister "in-
tended to prepare the public for the
renewed repression of journalists under
the pretext of accusing them of an abuse
of language."
Managers of newspapers, radio and
television stations revealed that they
were practicing self-censorship of cer-
tain news and were aware that to offend
the army was to risk new repression.
This presented the possibility that the
Haitian people would once again tune
in not to the TV or even radio, but to
their age-old rumor system, le t0eldiol.
It is in just such a climate of distrust
that Haiti's tldediol thrives, and disin-
formation from petty or professional
sources alike gains credence.

Summer Skirmishes

With the advent of transistors, radio
became the media of "the people" in
Haiti. Radio journalists developed fol-
lowings. Speaking in Creole, they ad-
dress the people directly wherever they
are: in their homes, in taptaps, in the
streets or fields and help them commu-
nicate with each other by transmitting
their messages. People go to radio
stations to send news to their relatives
throughout the country or to complain
of mistreatment or unfair practices. The
radio station became the peoples' forum
giving rise to small-town journalists
who transmit to the capital the news of
their community. Their job is often
dangerous, and if they dare attack local
authorities, their lives are in danger.
Despite the lethargic heat of the
season, the Haitian press was in a
vigorous polemical mood during the
summer of 1988. It was mango season,
traditionally a time to fight. Le tilediol
was loaded with rumors of an impend-
ing coup to halt what some called
Manigat's "economic d6choukaj" of
friends of the old regime from lucrative
government posts. The rumors, how-
ever, didn't make headlines.
Instead, Le Matin locked horns with
Le Progressiste Haitien, the newly
named state daily. A feud between Jean
Dominique of Radio Haiti-Inter and

Ben Dupuy publisher of the Brooklyn-
based "militant" leftist weekly Haiti-
Progres flared over the seizure or non-
seizure by airport security in Port-au-
Prince of the second shipment of its
May 25-31 edition, which carried the
banner headline "Regala Implicated In
Drug Trafficking." The following week
Haiti-Progres was on sale in the streets
of Port-au-Prince with the headline,
"Attempt to Muzzle Haiti-Progres."
There are now more than 200 Haitian
journalists, divided into two organiza-
tions. June 7th was redesignated the
"Day of the Press," and both groups
came together to celebrate. The Federa-
tion Haitienne de la Presse Profes-
sionelle gave its annual Journalism
Grand Prix Georges Petit Award to
Radio Metropole's Clarens Renois. "A
nation's worth is reflected in its press,"
Webert Lahens, outgoing secretary-
general of the Association des Journal-
istes Haitiens (AJH), reminded his col-
leagues repeating the words of Albert
Camus. Lahens stressed that Haitian
newspeople must take more responsibil-
ity in promoting the image of their
country. Too often, he said, the Haitian
press is not taken seriously and is
ignored. He called for an effort to raise
the prestige of the Haitian press and its
level of professional competence.

Children of the D6choukaj

"I was born into a society of mutes,"
recalled 24-year-old journalist Roosevelt
Jean-Frangois. "I grew up among peo-
ple who used sign language and double-
talk from behind their masks in order
to survive those years of Duvalier
terror."
This young man portrayed himself
as a "child of the ddchoukaj": born
again on 7 February 1986 when Jean-
Claude Duvalier fled to France. He was
one of those who became an instant
newsmen, wanting above all to help
report and write a new chapter of
Haitian history.
Better equipped than most, with not
only enthusiasm but also talent and a
journalism course at the French Insti-
tute, Roosevelt Jean-Francois began to
work for the state newspaper, Haiti
Libkree in April 1986. Later he began
to report for the Miami-published Haiti
En Marche, covering Manigat, whom
he believed had a strong anti-media
bias. "Even before the aborted elections
of 29 November 1987 Manigat had
reproached some publications accusing
them of publishing ugly photos of
him," the reporter recalled in early
June. He remembered listening to Ma-

CARIBBEAN REVIEW/11

Photo: J. B. Diederich

Haiti, post-censorship.

ts LES ES 411

CMIESCNDN

nigat accuse the foreign press of a
disinformation campaign over the per-
centage of voters who cast ballots on
17 January. "I felt I was back at school
again, as teacher Manigat scolded us
for not being serious and responsible,"
the young reporter exclaimed.
Roosevelt Jean-Francois is the first
to admit that the new wave of young
Haitian journalists needed more techni-
cal training, and he lamented the fact
that there was no real journalism school
in Haiti. Poorly paid, young Haitian
journalists must be equipped with true
dedication to grow into professionals.
Some are so poor they had to hitch rides
to cover news events during the past
two years.

Self-Reflection

Jean Dominique and Michele Montas
of Radio Haiti-Inter devoted June 7th
to a balance sheet of the previous two
years. "We of the press are but the
thermometer of the social fever," said
Dominique, recalling his November 1980
warning to the Jean-Claude Duvalier
government that "breaking the ther-
mometer doesn't bring the fever down."
During his New York exile in the
1980s, Dominique remembers hearing
fellow exiles say when they bought a
newspaper, "I'm going to buy 50 cents
worth of lies." But by and large, he
said, the papers of the diaspora make
important contributions, especially the
New York-based, Haiti Observateur,
the Miami-based Haiti en Marche,
Haiti Demain and Haiti Tribune.
He stressed that newspeople must be
rigorous, and imbued "with a profound
sense that information is something
serious which must be handled by
responsible people, by professionals who
must test their sources and put them
face to face so that from this confronta-
tion the truth will be born." He contin-
ued, "The day people stop tuning in
to Radio Haiti, to Radio Soleil, to
Radio Lumiere... that day we will have
stopped being useful to the country.
We are in a country where dictatorship
still exists and does so with bloodied
hands. The poor, the oppressed, expect
that we make their cause advance thanks
to the freedom of the press, and this
puts on our shoulders a great responsi-
bility. It makes us the first target of the
vengeful ones, the first target of the
devils, the first target of those who are
against change."

Dominique recalled the words of
then-prime minister Martial Celestin,
delivered the night before, lauding the
press as the "fourth power," and asked,
"but are we a 'power'? I believe the
word is used lightly. We are not a
power, we do not have any power. Our
power of informing, if it exists, is only
like that of a poor king without a
crown, whose throne is constantly shaken
by the waves of the coming and going
of those who want no information at
all. In our type of environment, when
one speaks of power it is to cut it down.
I don't believe we are a fourth power,
we are a public service...."
Dominique continued: "The presi-
dent of the republic or the prime minis-
ter, or the minister of information or
other eminent members of the state
apparatus tell us, 'You are not profes-
sionals, you are not responsible, you are
not competent, you do not know your
job'. It is true we don't know our job.
If thirty years of dictatorship has taught
us something, it is that we did not know
much. The same is true for medical
students, law students, architecture stu-
dents, engineering students. The uni-
versity was a Macoute university where
mediocrity reigned, where the prepara-
tion of cadres was not at all the concern
of those Macoutes who had access to
it The nonpreparation of journalists is
at the level of the general nonprepara-
tion of the cadre that came out of the
dictatorship, yet they point the finger
at us saying we are not prepared.
"We are unprepared professionals
among many other unprepared pro-
fessionals! Let's be responsible and see
things objectively. Today we will point
the finger at our own deficiencies cou-
rageously, but let no one put an added
load on our backs.... It must be humbly
recognized that the lack of preparation
is a general phenomenon that permeates
all social layers and all trades and all
activities."

Manigat's Last Round

"God is great. Life goes on, and the
State of Law emerges from this strength-
ened." Manigat thus opened his third
and last Palace press conference. It was
Thursday 16 June. Manigat was at his
best, appearing ecstatic, savoring his
words like vintage wine. For nearly two
hours he spoke from the podium; not
once did his optimism lag. It appeared
as if he were trying to project the

country into a new society by the power
of his words.
Dissecting newsmen's questions, his
answers became lectures. Manigat
wanted the media to know he didn't
hate them. He outlined their task: "The
people must learn to put things into
perspective," he said, "and that is
where I expect the help of the press,
because the media is better educated,
better tooled. They can contribute to
this 'putting into perspective'."
Rescinding army commander Lt. Gen.
Henri Namphy's order transferring Col.
Jean-Claude Paul from his command
of the Caserne Dessaline's tactical bat-
talion to army headquarters the day
before was "never a question of an
individual but a question of principle,"
he stressed. "The solution had been
taken under a very democratic principle
the supremacy of civilian power and
respect for constitutional norms...." A
government source had told foreign
newsmen that the Manigat-Namphy con-
frontation was triggered by Paul's de-
taining of nine military men said to
have been involved in a wave of terror-
ism, creating a climate of insecurity in
the country. Namphy reportedly ordered
Paul to release the men, and when Paul
refused, included him on the roster of
transfers.
Manigat was happy to announce that
"Thanks to the forces of order, we have
caught certain people. We have had
three such successes in the struggle
against insecurity. The latest not yet
announced publicly, but all over the
streets in the form of rumors is the
capture by the Dessaline Barracks Forces
of one of the terrorist networks that
operated both in Port-au-Prince and in
the provinces. This is an important
success, one which is to the credit of
this sector in charge of combatting
insecurity. We are therefore feeling
positive. It is a small network of 11
persons only one of whom is a civilian.
The matter is under investigation, and
the public will be given information
when it becomes necessary...."
Referring to the matter as having a
historic dimension, an evolutionary sense,
Manigat reiterated: "We are in the
midst of a democratic learning experi-
ence. What happened can be considered
as an institutional adjustment, within
the framework of the democratic princi-
ples of the supremacy of civilian power
and constitutional prescriptions.
"The civilian government and the
Continued on page 35

12/CARIBBEAN REVIEW

Try to Write...and You Will See What Happens

Vignettes from Haiti's Journalistic Past by Jean Desquiron

he first Haitian newspapers re-
sembled the French colonial pa-
pers, because many Haitian jour-
nalists had started writing during the
period of the French Revolution. The
first newspaper published in Saint Domin-
gue, Affiches Am6ricaines, appeared
in 1764. It published "notice of things
printed in France related to commerce,
agriculture, navigation, colonial agricul-
ture and culture...advertises things to
sell and rent, prices of commodities and
of freight."
The French Revolution changed all
that. The fiery articles of Catineau in
L'Ami de 1'Egalit6 and Gaterau in Le
Courrier Politique et Litt6raire went
so far that a member of the Colonial
Assembly finally asked that "the liberty
of the press be abolished for having
caused the ruin of Saint Domingue. The
colony was flourishing; but since it has
been allowed to write on all kinds of
subjects, tranquility and wealth have
disappeared. Rather than admit the lib-
erty of the press, it would be more
advisable to do like that emperor of
China who burned the presses, the
books and the writers."
From the beginning, the above atti-
tude has always been what the press
on the island has had to face from
rulers, whether they be the French
colonial government, the American oc-
cupation or the Haitian government. It
was always the same old story: Say
what you want so long as you do not
criticize the government! Or as Presi-
dent Nord Alexis is said to have put it,
Jean Desquiron is the author of Haiti a la
Une, a book about Haiti's press from 1724
to 1934, to be published soon with a preface
by Jean Fouchard, the "dean" of Haitian
journalists.

- *- 1 .

"1 "'- "i
.- i.

"I know that grammar is the art of
writing and speaking; try to write and
speak and you will see what happens."
The greatest Haitian journalist, Pierre
Fr6ddrique, was exiled three times and
finally died as a pauper in a New York
public hospital; Joseph Courtois also
spent many years in exile. The list is
long.
To be a journalist in Haiti is no bed
of roses. As early as 1820, President
Boyer had the journalist Darfour shot
in public. It was expected that with the
Americans in charge things would im-
prove. One of the first acts of the
occupation was the establishment of a
Provost Court to judge Haitian journal-
ists. And judged they were, and jailed.
The Haitian press has always been
partisan or, as the French say, "en-
gag. The journalists of yesteryear did
not consider the spreading of news their
main obligation; they easily became
proselytes and would preach their cause
while attacking their opponents. As a
result they were frequently in jail, in
exile, or challenged to a duel. And so

many salle d'armes where one could
learn to use a sword in order to be able
to hold a pen.
Furthermore, they considered them-
selves endowed with a mission and
would elaborate on the duties of the
journalist. Clement Magloire of Le Ma-
tin produced, on every anniversary of
his paper, a treatise on the goals of
journalism and the nuances of the trade.
Exilien Heurtelou would, every now
and then, formulate the ethics of the
profession. As to Edmond Paul, he was
considered the Jansenist of journalism
so austere were his writings.
Among the 885 papers designated
by Bissainthe from 1804 to 1949, only
Le Nouvelliste, founded in 1898, and
Le Matin, founded in 1907, are still
published. Those two were created by
true professionals who knew and still
know how to adapt themselves to Hai-
tian realities. They started small and
grew in the course of years, adept at the
old Haitian adage: "The pig must be
Continued on page 36

CARIBBEAN REVIEW113

The Haitian Diaspora

A Prescription for Decency
By Christian A. Girault

several Haitian authors have used
the term "diaspora" when speak-
ing of their country's migra-
tion. There is good reason for this.
Similar to other mass movements, such
as the exile of the Jews, the uprooting
of the Palestinians and the dispersal of
the Vietnamese, the expatriation of Hai-
tians has often taken a dramatic form,
striking the imagination by its scale
-perhaps a million individuals from a
total population of hardly more than 6
million and by its geographic range
in the Americas, Europe and Africa.
Far from being a recent phenomenon,
Haitian migrations are part of the na-
tion's history. Haiti was founded at the
start of the 19th century from the ruins
of Saint-Domingue; its population was
essentially of African origin. The nation
failed to achieve stability throughout a
troubled century during which military
leaders took power by force and were
removed by provincial caudillos, or
exiled abroad. The first great shock
came from overseas, in the form of a
North American occupation which lasted
19 years (1915-1934), remodeling the
political scene and imposing a new
economic orientation on the country.
Poor and dispossessed peasants were
"invited" to work in neighboring Cuba
and the Dominican Republic, where the
sugar plantations, usually owned by
North Americans, needed a large labor
force for the back-breaking job of cut-
ting sugarcane.
The second shock was the long dicta-
torship of Duvalier father and son
(1957-1986), which in a number of
Christian A. Girault, Research Fellow at the
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
in France, is currently director of the France-
British Caribbean program in Oxford. He is
the author of Le commerce du caf6 en Haiti
and editor of the Atlas d'Haiti. This essay was
first written before the January 17th elections.

respects departed from the traditional
Haitian political model with the intro-
duction of fear a diffuse, difficult-to-
explain emotion, but one that must be
taken into account if we are to under-
stand something of today's Haiti. Fear
divides the Haitians amongst them-
selves according to such criteria as
color, religious beliefs and geographical
origins; it also raises a barrier between
Haitians abroad and those at home.

A Varied Migration

Characteristically, Haitian emigration has
been a migration of the poor and those
with little education and few qualifica-
tions. To this extent the pattern of
migration necessarily reflects the social
structure: 75% rural and 80% illiterate,
but with certain differences. There is a
"natural" selection of migrants based
on their property, knowledge and dyna-

mism. Although ordinary Haitian mi-
grants are clearly less educated than the
Cubans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans and
even Jamaicans, they are not Haiti's
most miserable; the latter could never
hope to buy an air ticket or boat
passage, or to pay an agent.
In addition to this mass of anony-
mous migrants, there are the representa-
tives of a social or intellectual elite,
who stand out abroad by their sophisti-
cation or talent In New York, Paris and
Montrdal, where Haitian communities
from the diaspora are located, we find
a replica of Port-au-Prince society: man-
ual workers, taxi drivers and laborers
alongside exiled politicians, teachers,
artists, and administrators of interna-
tional organizations. An important point
should not be overlooked. For some
years now, as the exiles have grown
older, their children have become a
generation much less marked by the
traits of the traditional society with its
division between the masses and the
elite. This generation is merging into
the social pattern of the host country.
The international Haitian migratory
scene is extraordinarily varied, but it
does have a certain historic, and to
some extent linguistic, logic and most
certainly an economic and political
basis. The inner circle is clearly the
Caribbean basin, of which Haiti forms
the center. The Haitian element in Cuba
is well represented in the eastern part
of the island and is to a great extent
integrated in Cuban society; the inter-
ruption of all forms of contact for the
last 25 years led to an almost complete
break.
In the Dominican Republic, where
the largest Haitian population is lo-
cated, the scene is somewhat difficult
to follow because of the 400,000 or so
people of Haitian origin, a high propor-
tion of whom are second or third
generation and partially assimilated by
intermarriage or permanent homes. On
top of this we have the phenomenon
of the braceros, agricultural workers
taken on temporarily and cooped up in
the inhuman bateyes (compounds) of
the sugar plantations. Although the
scandal of this modern-day slavery has
rightly been denounced, these people
continue to exist in a state of insecurity,
denied civil and political rights by a
Dominican government rife with racist
theories for the last half century.
Haitians have formed active commu-
nities in Venezuela, Colombia and Mex-
ico. In territories which have a small

population, such as the Bahamas and
the French dipartements (overseas terri-
tories) in America, Haitian immigration
has been viewed as a threat to demo-
graphic and ethnic balance. French Gui-
ana is an extreme example, where
Haitians make up one-quarter of the
70,000 total population. All political
parties in the territory are demanding
immigration controls, and some favor
drastic solutions. The hypocrisy of such
statements becomes apparent when one
sees that all manual jobs (agriculture,
forestry, public transport) are done by
foreigners who are paid rates far below
the minimum wage.
With slight differences, the same
situation applies also to countries in the
outer circle, essentially the United States
and Canada. In the US, Haitian immi-
grants are mainly concentrated in three
urban areas: Miami, which can be
considered a part of the Caribbean
basin; New York, the second largest
center of Haitian population after Port-au-
Prince, and Boston. The majority of
immigrants in these cities date from the
Duvalier years and are thus relatively
recent compared with those in the
Caribbean. But even here a number of
different levels can be distinguished.
First, in the 1960s, came the "offi-
cial" migrants, mainly people from the
professional classes and political exiles
with a high level of education. They
were followed by representatives of the
lower middle classes, who found work
in New York as manual workers and
technicians. Finally came the poorest,
hounded by the police and persecuted
by the law, who sought refuge in a
number of ghettoes. The dream of
emigration to the US has been kept
alive, as can be witnessed by the queues
waiting outside the American consulate
in Port-au-Prince. Indeed, the US al-
lows about 10,000 immigrants to enter
the country every year in the interest
of family unity.
The system of immigration manage-
ment in Canada is very similar to that
of the United States, and the same
stratification can be seen in the Haitian
community that is concentrated in the
province of Quebec. Here an empathy
between the two nations has created
close ties which have favored rapid
integration of the Haitians. It should
not be forgotten that it was in Montr6al
that the most effective political opposi-
tion to the Duvalier dictatorship was
created. In France the formation of a
community in Paris is a recent phe-

nomenon, with many of the immigrants
arriving via the overseas d6partements.
Finally, in black francophone Africa,
the undoubted ability of the Haitians is
recognized, and they occupy positions
of responsibility in the government and
universities. Three related facets emerge
from this brief picture of the diaspora:
first, the difficulty of making any pre-
cise quantitative evaluation, explained
in part by the fact that population
figures in Haiti are based on rare
censuses and surveys and cannot be
regarded as reliable; second, the often
clandestine nature of Haitian migration;
and third, the wide variety of destina-
tions in English-speaking, as well as
Spanish-, French- and Creole-speaking
countries.

Misery, Magic and Disease

The period corresponding to the second
phase of the Duvalier regime (1971-
1986) witnessed a dramatic increase in
emigration. It can be argued that when
the population of a country reaches a
threshold of more than 200 inhabitants
per square kilometer, this pressure alone
is a critical factor; but there are indica-
tions that economic and political con-
siderations played a decisive part. North
American lawyers have spent a consid-
erable time trying to decide whether the
Haitian refugees were political or eco-
nomic exiles: a pointless distinction.
It was clearly the policy of the
dictatorship, supported moreover by the
United States, Canada and France, that
caused economic and financial disaster.
Haitians were confronted with such
poverty that they were forced to seek
greener pastures. Particular emphasis
can be placed on the rural crisis that led
peasants to migrate to the towns, espe-
cially the capital. This extended to a
migratory movement overseas, a phe-
nomenon known to sociologists as "step-
wise migration." The immediate causes
may be many: drought, good harvests
providing a surplus, police repression
or threats, the call to join a member of
the family, and so on. Improved air
links with foreign capitals also facili-
tated emigration.
Not all departures from the island are
final. There are instances of seasonal
or circular migration, such as the brac-
eros in the Dominican Republic; the
madames sara (peddlers) who buy and
sell consumer goods abroad, providing
Continued on page 37

CARIBBEAN REVIEW/S1

Manley Prepares to Return

PNP Options in Today's Jamaica
By Evelyne Huber Stephens and John D. Stephens

f the Jamaican people vote as
opinion polls indicate they will, the
People's National Party (PNP) will
be returned to power in the national
elections which must be held by the end
of 1988. The PNP's previous period in
office, from 1972 to 1980, attracted
international attention for the govern-
ment's attempt to forge a third path of
development between free market capi-
talism and authoritarian socialism. The
economic decline experienced by the
country in the 70s led many observers
to declare the attempt a failure; more
sympathetic treatments have argued that
the PNP was not without its successes.
Moreover from the present vantage
point, with the economic difficulties of
the subsequent Jamaica Labour Party
(JLP) government as a point of compari-
son, the failures of the Manley govern-
ment appear to be much less grave than
once imagined.
This is not to say that the party has
not reexamined its period in office and
subjected its policies, strategy and eco-
nomic management to self-criticism.
On the contrary, the party leadership
as a whole, and Manley in particular,
have analyzed that period and come to
some specific conclusions about its
failures and successes, and the party
has adjusted its strategy and policies
accordingly. The policies of a new PNP
government are now relatively clear to
the observer who cares to penetrate the
polemical debate carried on in the local
media.

Evelyne Huber Stevens and John D. Stevens
teach political science at Northwestern Uni-
versity. They were visiting research fellows
at the Institute for Social and Economic
Research, University of the West Indies,
Mona, Jamaica, in June-July 1987, and are
the authors of Democratic Socialism in Ja-
maica (Princeton University Press, 1986).

I Michael Manley (Photo: J. B. Diederich)
Current Realities

The central feature of Jamaican eco-
nomic reality today is the huge debt,J
which is truly staggering in its size and
implication for any government's op-
tions in economic policy. The debt has
increased from 82% of GDP when
Seaga took office in 1980 to over 154%
in 1985. Perhaps more important, the
proportion of exports of goods and
services which went to service the debt
increased from 24% in 1980 to 61% in
1985, though what was actually paid
amounted to "only" 41%. This com-
pares to a Third World average debt
service ratio of 22%. Jamaica's debt is
owed primarily to multilateral (39c%)
and bilateral (42%) official sources, in
contrast to Latin American countries
whose debt is primarily with com-
mercial banks. This gives Jamaica less
flexibility since multilateral institutions,
such as the IMF and World Bank, arei'
prevented by their charters from rolling
over outstanding debts. Finally, the
debt to the IMF is accompanied by the
usual conditionality, which constrains

any government to an extremely narrow
set of economic options.
The second most significant feature
of the Jamaican economy at this point
is the decline in bauxite production, by
far the largest foreign exchange earner
as of 1980. In that year, the country
exported 12 million tons of bauxite,
some of it in the processed form of
alumina. By 1986, bauxite exports had
fallen to 7 million tons. A further drop
in production was avoided only by the
JLP government's leasing of Alcoa's
closed Halse Hall plant, which was
reopened in July 1985 under the name
Clarendon Alumina Producers and was
soon operating at full capacity. A num-
ber of overseas markets were secured
for the sale of the plant's entire produc-
tion until 1995. State initiatives came
to account for 28% of bauxite sales
(entirely to the USSR) and 48% of
alumina sales.
This action of the Seaga government
is a direct extension of the Manley
government's bauxite policy and indeed
would have been impossible without
the initiative of the previous govern-
ment. The JLP government's difficul-
ties, especially in the area of foreign
exchange shortages, have frequently been
pinned on the fall in bauxite production.
It is important to point out that this has
been partially offset by the decline in
oil prices. While the current situation
is not as favorable as it was when the
JLP government took office, not to
speak of the situation before the 1979
oil price increase, it is a real improve-
ment over the 1981-1985 period.
In fact, the slight upturn in world
aluminum markets motivated Alcoa to
get back into alumina production in
Jamaica and to insist on a reactivation
of the joint-venture agreement with the
Jamaican government that had been in
effect before the plant's closure. This

16/CARBBEAN REVIEW

led to a court battle between Alcoa and
the government over the terms of the
agreement and apparently over forward
sales agreements with the international
minerals trader Marc Rich, the terms
of which have never been disclosed.
Undoubtedly, the bright spot in the
economy is tourism, now the number
one foreign exchange earner. Stopover
visitor arrivals have increased by two-
thirds during Seaga's tenure in office,
reaching one million visitors in 1987,
whereas arrivals had stagnated in the
last seven years of the PNP govern-
ment. Total foreign exchange inflows
from tourism reached US $412 million
in 1986. Net earnings were, of course,
lower, but informants in the tourist
industry contend that retained earnings
are now higher than estimated in 1960s
studies of the sector due to the over-
whelming dominance of local own-
ership unusual in the Caribbean
-and greater use of domestic inputs.
Jamaica is now considered to be operat-
ing at full capacity in the winter and
close to it in the summer. As a result,
tourism is now attracting significant
levels of new investment.
By contrast, the other traditional main-
stays of the Jamaican economy have
fared poorly since 1980. Sugar, banana
and citrus production were below their
1980 levels in 1986, though coffee did
experience an increase in the last year
of the period. Nontraditional exports
(all sectors) increased under the JLP
government, but given the small initial
base, the dollar increase in these prod-
ucts was only one-tenth of the decline
in traditional exports. Notable in this
increase were the free-zone export plat-
forms, which moved from a position
of essentially nil to one in which, in
1986, the sector employed 7,781 people
and made a small but significant contri-
bution to net foreign exchange earnings
(US $8.4 million more than coffee
but less than bananas).
Thus, the overall economic situation
under Seaga has not been good and,
indeed, fell far short of optimistic pro-
jections on which the 1981 agreement
with the IMF was based. The failures
in the export sector meant that the
government's trade liberalization policy
resulted in large increases in the trade
deficit, which were covered by loans.
Eventually this put the government in
an unviable economic situation and led
to the failure of IMF performance tests
in 1983. The IMF then forced the
government into a round of devalu-

nations and other austerity measures,
which substantially rolled back the level
of consumption by the huge majority
of the Jamaican population. Subsequent
failures led to renewed IMF pressure
for further devaluations and reduction
of the budget gap by cutting public
services. To avoid these unpopular meas-
ures, Seaga stabilized the exchange rate
through intervention in the auction and
forward sales of bauxite; he reduced the
budget gap through the sale of profit-
able state enterprises.
Economic performance improved some-
what in 1987, as indicated by positive
economic growth rates and a further
decline in unemployment. To a large
extent this was due to the oil price
decrease, reinforced by an upturn in
tourism and in exports of production
from free-zone export platforms. The
government's supporters have argued
that this shows that the adjustment
policies are bearing fruit (Headley
Brown, Governor of the Bank of Ja-
maica, Sunday Gleaner, 27 December
1987).
However, the decline in other ex-
ports, both traditional and nontradi-
tional, casts serious doubt on this asser-
tion and suggests that in fact little
structural adjustment has been achieved.
Moreover by the end of 1987, the bright
picture was clouded by several prob-
lems: the trade deficit increase from
US$370 million in 1986 to US$550
million in 1987 (see the response to
Brown by Omar Davies, Sunday
Gleaner, 3 January 1988), the decline
in tourism after the October stock mar-
ket crash, and the acceleration of infla-
tion (Prime Minister Seaga's statement,
Jamaican Weekly Gleaner, 22 Febru-
ary 1988). These problems have already
increased the pressure on the foreign
exchange supply and are certain to do
so even more in the future.
The overall picture of the economy,
then, while mixed, is primarily nega-
tive. While many of the current prob-
lems of the Jamaican economy are
structural deficiencies that the PNP
faced in its previous period in office,
the debt changes the situation entirely
and gives a future PNP government
very little latitude for action.

Windows & Legacies

To underline this point, let us compare
the situation in mid-1974, when the
Manley government had a clear window

of opportunity, with the current situ-
ation. In 1974, the combination of the
oil price increase and the imposition of
the bauxite levy led to a foreign ex-
change balance that worked moderately
in Jamaica's favor for the next few
years. This juncture created the space
for many of the PNP government's
initiatives in the areas of social expen-
diture and state ownership, not so much
because of the increased foreign ex-
change, but because it represented a big
increase in government resources (the
bauxite levy flowed into government
coffers while the oil price increase was
bor largely by consumers).
In the current situation, the oil-
bauxite balance is negative, though not
nearly as negative as in 1981-1985, and
the growth of tourist receipts not only
easily makes up for that difference but
also covers much of the decline in
traditional exports. Thus, the debt aside,
the current situation is rather similar to
1974. True, the decline in bauxite reve-
nues gives the state less latitude for
action, but the present situation does
not entirely reverse the 1974 flow from
private to public coffers since Seaga
decided not to pass the reduction in oil
prices on to consumers but rather ab-
sorbed it as government revenue.
The debt changes the situation to-
tally. Without the debt, a new PNP
government would have considerable
room to maneuver; with it, there is little
room. Moreover while Seaga has cut
the government budget deficit, the stop-
gap nature of his recent solution in this
area (selling state enterprises) as well
as the mortgaging of bauxite to main-
tain the exchange rate, will present the
PNP with some very serious problems
of fiscal management once they take
office.
Given the PNP's support of an active
and entrepreneurial role for the state in
advancing economic development, the
fact that the JLP's divestment program
was more rhetoric than reality (at least
up to 1987) is a plus. In fact, the JLP
government's divestment of 49% of the
shares of National Commercial Bank
and shares of the cement company in
1987, as well as the earlier minor
divestments like Versair and Southern
Processors, are more than offset by its
earlier acquisition of the Esso Oil Re-
finery, the Montego Bay Free Port and
the Caymanas Estates, the lease of the
Alcoa plant, and the expansion of state
trading to include automobile imports.
Otherwise, the JLP's legacy for the

CARIBBEAN REVIEW/17

condition of the state apparatus will be
quite negative. The cuts in employment
levels and in the real level of wages and
salaries, a result of IMF demands, have
led to the exit of skilled personnel from
public-sector jobs and to low morale
among those that remain. The quality
of social services delivered by the state
has deteriorated greatly. Even the most
pro-JLP businessmen we spoke with
volunteered that public health care and
education had deteriorated so much that
it was now a major national problem.
The PNP's democratic socialist de-
velopment path provides an important
role for the private sector and, in
assessing a future government's pros-
pects, it is necessary to look at the
current investment climate. Interviews
with businessmen in June-July 1987
indicated a strong confidence in the
local economic climate and a positive
attitude toward new investment, a strik-
ing change from 1982. Significantly,
these new investments are destined for
tourism, coffee and some of the other
minor traditional agricultural exports,
nontraditional agricultural exports such
as flowers, export services like data
entry, but not to products aimed at the
domestic market. This is not surprising
given the compression of domestic de-
mand due to the devaluations of 1983-
1985 and the reduced protection for
import-substituting industries such as
shoes and garments, which were deci-
mated by import deregulation policies.
Yet, this optimism was hardly reflected
in aggregate figures on private-sector
investment, at least through 1986. With
preliminary figures showing that 1986's
positive trends in growth and employ-
ment have continued in 1987, it may
well be that private investment experi-
enced a turnaround in 1987. However,
it may also be that the type of business-
men we talked to were in a position to
take advantage of new export opportu-
nities, whereas others, in small and
medium-sized businesses and those in-
volved entirely in import substitution,
were not.
On the political side, the PNP enjoys
a substantial lead in popular support.
In the Parish Council elections of July
1986, the PNP received 58% of the
vote to the JLP's 41%. A January 1988
opinion poll by Carl Stone shows the
PNP leading the JLP by 57% to 43%
(Jamaican Weekly Gleaner, 15 Febru-
ary 1988). This poll appears to confirm
a trend evident since early 1985, which
showed the PNP portion of the total

electorate as stable, while the JLP
picked up uncommitted voters as the
economy improved. The most impor-
tant factor behind the swing to the PNP
up to 1985 was certainly the deteriora-
tion of living standards due to the
devaluations of 1983-1985. While the
employment situation seems to have
improved recently, this in part masks a
shift from better paid, more secure jobs
in the public sector and protected import-
substituting manufacturing to less well
paid jobs in the free-zone export plat-
forms and work in the informal sector.
However, the causes of the decline
in the JLP's political fortunes go deeper
than the immediate reaction of Jamai-
cans hit by falling purchasing power.
The party had already begun to slip in
the polls in late 1982, and the PNP had
edged ahead by mid-1983, well before
the IMF-induced devaluations were felt.
The JLP had the image of the party for
the "big man," while the PNP's image
was one of concern for the "small
man" and the poor. The contrast be-
tween the distant and authoritarian Seaga
and the charismatic and popular Manley
added to this difference in public per-
ception of the parties. The greater im-
pact of the devaluations and cuts in
public-sector employment and services
on the lower classes reinforced this
image, as did signs of ostentatious
living among the upper middle and
upper classes, such as the proliferation
of satellite dishes and new Mercedes
automobiles.
That the JLP's decline in popularity
is not limited to those who have suf-
fered a severe deterioration of living
standards themselves is demonstrated
by the fact that in the Parish Council
elections, the PNP piled up huge mar-
gins of victory in the tourist areas
despite the economic boom in that
sector. Thus, while the JLP may still
pick up some uncommitted voters if the
economy continues to improve, it can-
not win unless it makes significant
inroads into the bloc of lower and lower
middle-class voters who have been sol-
idly supporting the PNP for three years.

The PNP Transformation

Perhaps the most actively debated po-
litical topic in Jamaica today, from the
informed person in the streets to the
social scientist, from the embassy staffs
to the politicians themselves, is the
PNP's shift to a more moderate political

1/CARIBBEAN REVIEW

stance. It is widely agreed that the party
has moved to the center. What is
disputed is whether this is a cosmetic
change designed to get the party back
in power and then to be discarded (the
JLP view, at least in public), or a real
change but possibly not a permanent
one should the situation change in the
party's first years in office (the most
frequent view and the one held by
businessmen, most political observers,
the PNP right and parts of the PNP left).
The groups which disagree that the
PNP has moved to the center are,
interestingly, the PNP center itself, which
dominates the party leadership at this
point, and parts of the PNP left. They
contend that the party has eliminated
excessive rhetorical posturing, adopted
a more realistic assessment of the coun-
try's geopolitical situation, and adjusted
its policies to fit the reality of the
tremendous economic constraints and
limitations on the state's managerial
capacity. This is not a change in the
party's basic ideology and political
strategy, but a maturing of the party and
its policies, they contend.
There is no doubt that the party has
undergone some transformation since
the 1980 election, but the extent to
which this represents a substantial shift
to the center in terms of the policies the
party is likely to carry out, as opposed
to the rhetoric which accompanies these
policies, is a more complicated ques-
tion. The public perception of a move
to the center is based above all on the
exit of leading leftists from the party
leadership. The "Gang of Four" (Dun-
can, Small, Spaulding and Bertram), as
well as Dudley Thompson, who fre-
quently supported the left in internal
party discussions, have all left; but only
in Duncan's case can the departure be
said to be motivated by a difference
with the party leadership on the direc-
tion that the party ought to be taking.
For the rest the reasons were personal:
health, finances, personal disputes. More-
over, it now appears very likely that
Small will return.
The second source of the public's
perceiving a shift to the center by the
PNP is the party's attempt to: (1) have
cordial relations with the United States
and thus to tone down statements about
US imperialism; (2) distance itself some-
what from the close relationship with
Cuba of the 70s; (3) tone down left
rhetoric in general, in part to improve
relations with the domestic private sec-
tor; and (4) distance the party from the

domestic communist party, the Work-
ers' Party of Jamaica (WPJ).
This agenda is hardly new. It dates
back to early 1981 when Manley ten-
dered his resignation from the party.
The party overwhelmingly rejected it,
giving Manley the vote of confidence
he had sought. In his subsequent post-
mortem analyzing the election loss of
1980, Manley emphasized the negative
role the "communist boogey" had
played for the PNP both domestically
and internationally, and he generally
endorsed the agenda laid out above as
necessary for reducing the party's vul-
nerability to attack.
In the initial years after the 1980
defeat, Manley also adopted the self-
critical view that the PNP government
had overestimated the capacity of the
state to manage all the programs that it
had passed; though correctly conceived,
the programs were often poorly imple-
mented. Moreover, the party's policy
had emphasized redistribution at the
expense of production. Manley has since
echoed these themes in a large number
of public speeches in Jamaica, includ-
ing mass open-air gatherings, in which
he has made it clear to the crowds that
a new PNP government would put
production first and that there would
be no bonanza of social spending.
Does this represent a move to the
center? The moves to distance the party
from "communism" are primarily a
question of image management, not of
substance. Neither can the emphasis on
production be termed a move to the
right; if anything, the contrary is true.
The realization that the PNP govern-
ment had overestimated the managerial
capacity of the state does imply that the
government should have done less, and
in a sense this is a move to a more
conservative stance. But even from the
point of view of the most committed
socialist, it is obviously a wise political
move to attempt to do only what you
can in fact implement. Thus, there is
some ground for the claim that the
PNP's changes in this regard represent
a "maturation" and not a move to the
right. In general, most of the actual
policy changes of the PNP, which on
one level do represent a more moderate
or cautious position, in fact were neces-
sitated by the objective constraints of
the situation stemming from the world
system and the internal political econ-
omy of Jamaica.
This does not mean that there has
Continued on page 39

CARIBBEAN REVIEWI19

Getting Your Hands Dirty

Negotiating with Dictators: The Case of Nicaragua
By Robert A. Pastor
Illustrations by Carlos R. Mestre

he United States has always
been uncomfortable and
ineffective in negotiating with
dictators, whether of the right or the
left. Recent efforts to negotiate with
General Manuel Antonio Noriega
of Panama are yet another illustra-
tion. But the one country where the
US has had the least success in the
last decade has been Nicaragua.
Because the dictators have inhab-
ited different ends of the political
spectrum, Nicaragua offers a spe-
cial case for trying to understand
the causes of the dilemma.
The argument against talking with
dictators has come from one side
or the other, but it has been the
same. In 1978, when the United
States was leading an OAS media-
tion, many people in Nicaragua and
Robert A. Pastor is Professor of Political
Science at Emory University and Director of
Latin American and Caribbean Studies and
Programs at Emory's Carter Center. He is the
author of Condemned to Repetition: the United
States and Nicaragua, from which this article
is excerpted with permission of Princeton
University Press. A paperback version of the
book with a new epilogue was issued in
August.

outside said it was ridiculous to
think one could negotiate with So-
moza. He could not be trusted; he
was not serious.
The same argument has been
heard about dealing with the Sandin-
istas. When asked about a Sandin-
ista proposal in the fall of 1983,
President Reagan dismissed it, say-
ing: "I haven't believed anything
they've been saying since they got
in charge." ElliottAbrams, the Assis-
tant Secretary of State, said in August
1985: "It is preposterous to think
we could sign a deal with the Sandin-
istas and expect it to be kept." By
assuming that they were perma-
nently untrustworthy, the admini-
stration in effect ruled out nego-
tiations except for purposes ofpropa-
ganda. John Horton, a retired CIA
official explained that the Admini-
stration stopped seeking a negoti-
ated solution: "This administration
considers agreements with Marxist-
Leninists to be risky as they are
- but it also finds them too distaste-
ful and inconsistent with its own
tough posturing to be a serious
option. The administration did not
simply fail to give sufficient hearing
to a diplomatic strategy; it ideologi-
cally shackled its imagination and
so was not free to use the informed
pragmatism that enables a skilled
diplomat to probe for solutions."
The charge that Somoza or the
Sandinistas was not serious is not
without basis, but it is besides the
point. Both governments wanted to
avoid negotiations that would com-
promise or reduce their legitimacy
or power. Nonetheless, both Somoza
and the Sandinistas were realists
and viewed negotiations as one of
many ways to pursue their interests.
They would negotiate as seriously

as the circumstances warranted; every-
thing would depend on the price.
The question, then, for the US is
what is the appropriate application
offorce and negotiating skill to test
the Nicaraguan government.
In the following excerpt from my
book Condemned to Repetition: the
United States and Nicaragua, I dis-
cuss a moment in the negotiations
with Somoza -from about Novem-
ber 1 until mid-December 1978 -
when Somoza might have been seri-
ous enough to deal if the US had
fully grasped the opportunity. This
was one of many turning points in
the relationship between the two
governments when a decision by one
could have made the outcome less
tragic than what occurred.

[By November 1, 1978,] Somoza was
sensitive to having reached a cross-
roads. As he wrote in his memoirs:
"We went around and around in these
negotiations, but were getting nowhere.
However, one point was coming through
loud and clear; the negotiating team had
come to Nicaragua with instructions to
get me out of office." He wrote that

201CARIBBEAN REVIEW

he then consulted with his Cabinet, the
Liberal Party, and the General Staff of
the National Guard, and found that
none could contemplate a future with-
out him.
On November 6, the Liberal Party
- Somoza's mouthpiece rejected
the FAO [the opposition's Broad Oppo-
sition Front] proposal for Somoza to
step aside with a long and legalistic
defense of the government and the
constitution....The next day, the OAS
Mediation Team [composed of US Am-
bassador William Bowdler, Guatemalan
Ambassador Alfredo Obiols, and Do-
minican Admiral Ram6n Emilio Jimdn-
ez] met privately with Somoza. They
noted the widespread sentiment in Nica-
ragua that peace would not be possible
while he remained in power, and they
asked whether he would consider re-
signing to facilitate an arrangement
between the PLN (the Liberal Party)
and the FAO. This went considerably
beyond Bowdler's instructions at the
time, but the demarche represented the
consensus of the mediation team. So-
moza rejected the idea, saying that he
still enjoyed substantial support in the
country, and that a plebiscite to measure
party strength would be the fairest way
to test his popularity.
Bowdler was feeling the pressure
from the opposition and from the bur-
den of his task. To hold the opposition
and the Mediation Team together, he
had to persuade them that the US
government would be prepared to de-
liver Somoza when the time came, but
he was not at all certain his government
would deliver, and he was uncertain
whether US leverage would work. In a
private meeting with Somoza on No-
vember 10, Bowdler asked Somoza to
reconsider, and felt Somoza might be
wavering even though he said he would
not resign. Afterwards, he called Assis-
tant Secretary of State Viron Pete Vaky,
whose patience had already been ex-
hausted. Vaky then informed me [I was
the NSC staff responsible for Latin
America] that the time had come to
move to full sanctions. We scheduled
a cabinet-level Policy Review Commit-
tee (PRC) meeting of the National
Security Council on November 13, and
Bowdler returned for the meeting.

The Plebiscite

On Sunday evening, November 12,
1978, to review options for the PRC,

Vaky asked me to a meeting in his
office with Bowdler, Brandon Grove
(one of Vaky's Deputies), and Steven
Oxman, [Vance's deputy Warren] Chris-
topher's talented special assistant.
Bowdler informed us that the essence
of Somoza's counterproposal was a
plebiscite; this was the first we had
heard of that. Oxman and I asked some
questions, and both Vaky and Bowdler
abruptly dismissed the questions and
the proposal. "It's a stalling tactic,"
Bowdler said. "He's throwing sand in
our faces," Vaky added. Both believed
Somoza would use the plebiscite pro-
posal to drag on negotiations, divide the
FAO, and confuse the American people.
I agreed on Somoza's motive, but
said that the purpose of the mediation
was to negotiate a transitional govern-
ment, and the United States just cannot
dismiss an election as a method for
accomplishing that. We needed to re-
spond in some way, and asked whether
we could not turn the plebiscite pro-
posal on its head: instead of voting on
political parties, Nicaraguans would vote
on Somoza. This would infuse the
mission of the mediation to have
Somoza stand aside in favor of a new
government with the legitimacy that
would make it impossible for Somoza
to reject. The issue, I argued, was not
whether to accept or dismiss a plebi-
scite, but whether negotiations could
establish a free enough election to
permit the Nicaraguan people to vote
Somoza out. Negotiating those terms
would be difficult, perhaps impossible,
but we had to try. It would put us on a
morally sound and defensible course,
and if a plebiscite occurred, it would
provide the FAO the opportunity to
organize itself as a unified national
party, which in turn would make it
better prepared to govern. Whether or
not negotiations succeeded, it seemed
to me that we had to call Somoza's
bluff before he called our's. Both Vaky
and Bowdler opposed the idea, but
Oxman supported it.
The PRC meeting on November 13
started at 5 p.m., and for nearly two
hours the administration had its first
high-level intense discussion on Nicara-
gua....The group discussed three op-
tions: (1) transform the plebiscite idea
into a vote on Somoza's staying in
power and negotiate terms that would
ensure a free election; (2) dismiss the
plebiscite and apply pressure on So-
moza (a full menu of sanctions) to
negotiate his departure in accordance

with the FAO plan; or (3) discontinue
mediation and walk away. The discus-
sion reflected a sharp division with
Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, his
deputy Warren Christopher, and Na-
tional Security Advisor Zbigniew Brze-
zinski arguing on behalf of option #1,
and Vaky and Bowdler for option #2.
General W. Y. Smith from the Joint
Chiefs of Staff was predictably cau-
tious, arguing against pulling out the
US military group one of the sanc-
tions on bureaucratic grounds. "Why
us?" There were no advocates for #3.
Bowdler explained that the FAO had
already rejected the plebiscite proposal
and felt exposed. He argued that they
weree capable of forming a govern-
ment if Somoza stepped] aside soon.
Bowdler and Vaky argued that the
plebiscite was diversionary; the opposi-
tion would never accept it, and we
would lose a crucial opportunity to
resolve the crisis.
Brzezinski and Vance argued that
we should tell the FAO that if they
accepted the plebiscite idea, we would
work to make it fair. If Somoza then
rejected the plebiscite, we would back
the FAO and impose sanctions against
Somoza.... Brzezinski asked Bowdler
whether Somoza would leave if we
approved option #2 (sanctions). Bowd-
ler said the odds were slightly better
than 50-50. Following the logic of
Bowdler's answer, Brzezinski hinted
that if Somoza did not resign, the
United States would be left without
leverage, and the situation could be-
come untenable very rapidly. Interna-
tional support for our position would
be essential, but it did not exist then.
That was why the international consul-
tations, which the State Department
ha[d] been instructed to pursue, were
so important. The PRC also emphasized
again that maintenance of the unity of
the National Guard was a key objective
for US policy. There was no dis-
agreement on this latter point as every-
one recognized that a post-Somoza gov-
ernment that lacked a firm military base
could be overrun by the FSLN. Vance
said State would redo the memorandum
for the president to reflect the three
options. Vance permitted Vaky and
Bowdler to make the strongest case for
option #2 (sanctions) in the memo-
randum and Christopher and his staff
- with my help made the case for
option #1 (modified plebiscite). The
next day Vance sent the memo to the
NSC, which put a cover memorandum

CARIBBEAN REVIEW21

on top recommending option #1. Vance
had deliberately chosen not to make a
State Department recommendation, evi-
dently because he did not want to
undercut visibly his senior officers even
though he disagreed with them. Before
making his decision, however, Carter
called Vance, who recommended option
#1, and Carter approved that option.
The PRC debate showed that the
major division within the US govern-
ment at that time was not between
bureaucracies State v. NSC nor
between hawks and doves, but rather
between the political appointees the
President's men and career officials.
The career officials Vaky and Bowd-
ler were more attuned to the debate
in Managua and more disposed to make
the opposition's case for pushing So-
moza out, whereas the President's men
were more sensitive to developing a
policy that was defensible in the United
States and more inclined to advocate a
US approach to solving the problem
- elections. These alignments were
neither unchanging nor predetermined,
but the way the issue was then framed
- plebiscite or overthrow Somoza -
increased the likelihood of such an
alignment. For a foreign policy to be
effective, of course, it needs to weave
together these two strands and sensitivi-
ties, and that is the purpose of the NSC
process.
Before returning to Managua, Bowd-
ler met with Carter for a brief conversa-
tion and a photograph. The purpose was
to show that the President had confi-
dence in him. Carter recalled that Bowd-
ler and he "agreed to push a strict
plebiscite." If Somoza did not accept
the terms for such a plebiscite, then, in
Carter's words, Somoza's "incumbency
will be difficult to sustain."
Despite this opportunity to com-
municate directly with the President,
or perhaps because of it, Bowdler re-
turned to Managua discouraged, but he
did not flinch. He did his utmost to
prove his previous prediction, that they
would never accept a plebiscite, wrong.
First, he had to persuade his fellow
mediators, a challenge made almost
impossible by publication of an article
in the Washington Post on November
17, describing the other two mediators
as puppets of the United States. None-
theless, he succeeded, and then to-
gether, the three approached the FAO.
Robelo's first reaction was negative,
but he and his colleagues eventually
realized, as the United States had, that

opposing a free election was like oppos-
ing motherhood. In the end, the remain-
ing organizations in the FAO voted 9-3
in favor of supporting a plebiscite on
Somoza.
Bowdler worked with the Mediation
Team [MT] and the FAO to draft a
specific plebiscite proposal in which
Nicaraguans could decide whether So-
moza should remain in office. The
plebiscite would be organized, ad-
ministered, and supervised by an inter-
national authority, of perhaps as many
as 2,000 officials. To ensure the credi-
bility and impartiality of the election,
the FAO demanded the lifting of the
state of siege (reimposed in September)
and several other steps. If Somoza lost,
the FAO plan for a transitional govern-
ment would come into effect: (1) So-
moza would resign and leave the coun-
try. (2) The congress would elect an
interim president, and then be re-
constituted to reflect the predominance
of the FAO. Then (3), congress would
elect a president, who would serve until
free elections in May 1981.
Essentially, the MT used the plebi-
scite as a bridge between two ostensibly
irreconcilable positions. If Somoza won
the plebiscite, his Liberal Party pro-
posal would be implemented and oppo-
sition leaders would join the government
If Somoza lost, the FAO's proposal
would be implemented. On November
21, the MT presented the integrated
proposal to both sides, and for the next
two weeks, the details were negotiated.
...On November 29, the FAO agreed to
the general plebiscite proposal, and the
next day, Somoza agreed.
In response to the FAO demands,
which the United States supported, So-
moza lifted the state of siege, declared
a general amnesty, and revoked the
"Black Code" censoring radio and
television. On December 4, 1978, four
days after Somoza accepted the plebi-
scite idea, he sent Luis Pallais, his
cousin and leader of the Liberal Party,
on a secret mission to Washington. For
the first time, Pallais believed Somoza
would accept a genuine plebiscite and
would resign if he lost.
In anticipation of one possible out-
come, Pallais sought answers to three
questions: (1) Could Somoza and his
entourage get asylum in the United
States? (2) Would the United States
extradite him? and (3) Would his assets
be secure from seizure? Vaky checked
with the legal advisers in State and with
Christopher, but not with the NSC, and

responded that under the right circum-
stances, the United States would grant
asylum, but explicit guarantees on ex-
tradition and protection of assets would
depend on international law and trea-
ties. (Pallais described this exchange
as a meeting; Vaky recalls that Pallais
sent these questions to him through the
US Embassy in Managua.) It did not
occur to Vaky to use the three questions
as a bargaining lever to obtain So-
moza's cooperation for the plebiscite
proposal or for his resignation. This
crucial opportunity for negotiating So-
moza's exit was lost. Pallais returned
to Nicaragua to tell Somoza, who said
the "answers were satisfactory."
The clouds seemed to open for a
moment. In a talk with newspaper
editors) on December 7, Carter ex-
plained how the United States "helped
to shift the Nicaraguan circumstance
from active and massive bloodshed and
violence into a negotiation on the de-
tails of a democratic plebiscite....We
don't know that we will be successful,
but I think that in itself is progress."
The next day for the first time during
the mediation, both sides sat down
across the table from one another to
negotiate the specifics. Prior to that, the
MT had been shuttling between both
sides.
These events chilled the Sandinista
leadership, who went to Havana to
discuss strategy. On December 9, 1978,
the three factions of the FSLN united
for reasons of fear and promises of help
- the fear that the mediation might
succeed or that Pastora might displace
them, combined with the personal influ-
ence of Castro and his promise of aid
if they united. Their unity "commu-
niqu6," however, underscores their ma-
jor concern:
We have decided to unite our politi-
cal and military forces in order to
guarantee that the heroic struggle of
our people not be stolen by the machi-
nations of yankee imperialism and the
treasonous [sic] sectors of the local
bourgeoisie....We reject the imperialist
mediation....
A plebiscite...is no more than a trap
that leads to compromise and to trea-
son. The overthrow of the dictatorship
through revolutionary means and the
dissolution of the National Guard are
the indispensable conditions for a true
democracy.
The leaders deliberately excluded Eden
Pastora from the Directorate because
they suspected his Social Democratic

22/CARIBBEAN REVIEW

inclinations. However, Pastora was the
crucial link to Carlos Andr6s P6rez and
Omar Torrijos, and so they appointed
him Chief of the Army actually of
the southern front.
On December 12, the New York
Times published an editorial entitled
"New Hope In Nicaragua," noting that
"another round of civil war may now
be averted in Nicaragua, thanks mainly
to an inter-American team of mediators,
led by the US." A Washington Post
editorial on December 19 sang praises:
A month ago, Nicaragua seemed ready
to resume a civil war that could only
have ended with the ravaging of the
country and the victory of an authori-
tarian regime either of the left or the
right. Today, it is just possible to hope
Nicaragua is on the way to becoming
a democratic society....American diplo-
macy has reached out to find and
embolden and strengthen the demo-
cratic moderates of a war torn country.
Bowdler had managed, through her-
culean efforts, to maintain the momen-
tum of negotiations, but Somoza's devi-
ousness tripped up the effort at its most
promising point. On December 20, after
more than eight rounds of negotiations
and numerous drafts, the Mediation
Team put forward a final detailed plebi-
scite proposal, which reflected some of
the give-and-take of both positions, but
was closer to the position of the FAO.
The major change from the Novem-
ber 21 proposal was that Somoza was
permitted to stay in Nicaragua during
the plebiscite campaign, although his
son and brother would still have to
leave. If he lost the plebiscite, Somoza
would have to leave, but he could return
if he so desired after a suitable period.
The MT proposal compromised on the
outcome if Somoza won the election.
Somoza insisted that the opposition join
to help stabilize the government, while
the FAO refused to associate with
Somoza under any circumstances. The
MT proposed that the FAO become a
"peaceful opposition" party in the new
proposal. The vote was proposed to
occur on February 25, 1979.
Partly because the proposal was much
closer to their own than it was to
Somoza's, the FAO accepted it the next
day. This was still a difficult decision
for the FAO because of the relentless
pressure on them to resign. Their accep-
tance reflected a greater degree of unity
than anyone thought possible two months
before. Since one of the purposes of the
mediation was to encourage the unity

of the moderate opposition, it was
reassuring to know that had occurred,
even though the outcome was in doubt.
Somoza's initial enthusiasm for a
plebiscite had dissipated after it was
turned back on him. Nevertheless, he
sent Pallais to meet with Vaky again
to discuss some of the details. Before
leaving Managua, Pallais satisfied him-

self that Somoza was still serious about
a plebiscite, and when Vaky asked him
the same question he had asked So-
moza, Pallais answered confidently that
Somoza was serious. However, by the
time Pallais returned, Somoza had
changed his mind. Before he had an
opportunity to explore the reasons for
Continued on page 45

CAIBBEAN REVIEW123

i,-
r
I i
:I

President Anastasio Somoza Debayle (Tacho II) of Nicaragua and Richard M. Nixon, April 1971
Photos from Bernard Diederich, Somoza, the Legacy of US Involvement in Central America

policy towards Nicaragua has
been the subject of constant
partisan political controversy. In recent
years, Washington's obsession with the
issue of the contras has tended to
dominate this dispute. Supporters of
administration policies usually portray
Nicaragua's Sandinista government as
fanatical communist revolutionaries, con-
trolled by Cuba and the Soviet Union.
On the left, defenders of the Sandinistas
often claim that they are nationalist
reformers, reacting to US efforts to
dominate their nation and crush any
effort to promote basic social change.
Such simplistic formulations contribute
little to our understanding of Nicaragua
or of the broader issues involved in
formulating US responses to revolu-
tions in Latin America.
Condemned to Repetition, while
not totally without partisan bias, man-
ages to break free from the sterile
polemics which have characterized re-
cent debates over Central American
policies, and provides the reader with
fascinating, informative and frequently
provocative insights into the dilemmas
of policy formulation and implementa-
tion in a revolutionary situation. The
author was Director of Latin American
and Caribbean Affairs on the National
Security Council throughout the Carter

administration. From the January 1978
assassination of La Prensa editor Pedro
Joaquin Chamorro, until the 1981 in-
auguration of Ronald Reagan, Pastor
probably spent more time dealing with
Nicaragua than with the problems of
any other Latin American nation. He
combines this insider's view of devel-
opments with massive research into
available published and documentary
sources, and interviews with key actors
on all sides of the conflict to produce
by far the best study to date on the early
years of the Sandinista revolution.
Pastor's study focuses on the US
response to the crisis in Nicaragua and
the failure of both the Carter and
Reagan administrations to effectively
influence events in that nation. The
author takes as his premise that, while
both administrations were acutely aware
of the necessity of avoiding the mis-
takes which had led to the establish-

ment of a communist state in Cuba,
they found themselves repeatedly faced
with the same options as those encoun-
tered in earlier dealings with Castro
and, all too often, events evolved in the
same manner. His description of how
Washington's policy makers found them-
selves "condemned to repetition" and
his analysis of why this occurred forms
the heart of the volume.
For Pastor, "the clue for understand-
ing both the mistakes of the past and
the possibilities of the future lies at the
intersection of US and Latin American
policies." Recognizing the limitations
imposed on policy by the heritage of
previous administrations, he avoids the
common trap of assuming that the
United States can control events in
nations such as Nicaragua if only cor-
rect policies are adopted. Instead, he
correctly observes that "though the
United States is vastly more powerful

24/CARIBBEAN REVIEW

Nicaraguan president Daniel OrtegaPhoto: J. B. Diederich

Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega

Photo: J. B. Diederich

than the nations of Central America,
one should not assume that such power
automatically translates into influence
or control. Indeed, such power is some-
times reversible, with leaders or groups
in the region using the United States
to further their own political or eco-
nomic ends, while ignoring US attempts
to influence them." This ability to see
beyond the view from Washington is
one of the book's greatest assets.
The volume's opening section details
the pre-1977 history of Nicaragua. The
author's treatment of developments from
the inauguration of the Carter admini-
stration until Nicaragua's August 1978
mass uprising against the Somoza dicta-
torship is surprisingly brief, a fact
which probably reflects the limited at-
tention given events in that nation until
it was clear that the United States was
confronting a major crisis. This section
does include a valuable discussion of
the role of human rights policies within
the administration and the infighting
which developed over efforts to imple-
ment such policies.
Coverage of the US response to the
uprising, the decision to undertake a
multinational mediation of the Nicara-
guan conflict, and the failure of this
effort provides excellent insights into
the ways in which the Carter admini-
stration formulated policies and the
reasons why such policies, all too often,
failed to achieve their desired goals.
Poor intelligence reports, a failure to
understand the motives of all the actors
involved, a basically incompatible de-
sire to promote human rights and de-
mocracy while remaining committed to
non-intervention, and ongoing policy
divisions within the administration all
contributed to the failure of this effort,
a failure which laid the groundwork for
the eventual victory of the Sandinistas.
To the author's credit, he is rarely
defensive or apologetic as he recounts
events. Disputes over policy with Assis-
tant Secretary of State Viron P. Vaky
are fairly and fully laid out. Within the
administration, the views of the NSC
usually prevailed over the positions
advocated by the State Department, but
in retrospect it often seems as though
Ambassador Vaky's understanding of
the situation was actually better. Pastor
makes no effort to gloss over such
events. He even details the frantic
response of the administration to threats
by Panama's strongman, General Omar
Torrijos, to bomb Somoza's bunker, a
Continued on page 46

Narrative of a Five

Years Expedition

Against the Revolted

Negroes of Surinam
JOHN GABRIEL STEDMAN
Transcribed for the First Time from the
Original 1790 Manuscript
Edited, and with an Introduction and Notes,
by Richard Price and Sally Price
John Gabriel Stedman's Narrative of a Five
Years Expedition, first published in London
in 1796, was an immediate popular success.
Illustrated by William Blake, Francesco
Bartolozzi, and others, it was quickly trans-
lated into a half-dozen languages and was ''
eventually published in over twenty '
different editions.
Now a new, unexpurgated edition based on the author's own recently
discovered manuscript reveals for the first time Stedman's true views on
slavery, his frank descriptions of relations between masters and their female
slaves, and other material deemed unsuitable for an eighteenth-century
audience. Freed from its original publisher's censorship. Stedman's \arrative
stands as one of the strongest indictments ever to appear against Necw
World slavery
"The hook is a blockbuster:' Stuart B. Schwartz, I niversit\ of Minnesota
$95.00

Peasants and Capital
l)ominica in the Iorldl Economy

lowv does one explain. Michel-Rolph Irouillol asks.
the "peculiar coexistence of peasants and capitalism
in a country fully incorporated in the global economnl
system? Combining history, political econoim\. .nd
anthropology Peasants and (.a/ital provides the
first scholarlN examination of the island nation (o
)ominica and the enco unter bet\ ween a lilt Ic known
Caribbean culture and the world econocmil
Trouillot traces the Dominican peasants historical
struggles with planters, colonial officials. and traders
over the organization of work and production And in
an extended ethnographic description. Trouillol
illuminates the economic, cultural. and historic al
forces at work at the level of an indi\ dual
D lominican village

$35.00

'I -. S. .o

CARIBBEAN REVIEW/25

Transition to Nowhere
Continued from page 6

asymmetry between nominal and real
power led to an untenable situation.
Perhaps more important than the
Electoral Council's make-up and pre-
rogatives was the way the differences
as to how it should operate were re-
solved (or not resolved). Instead of
trying to at least partially accommodate
the junta's concerns, the Council stood
its ground and refused to budge. Char-
acteristically unable to articulate its
concerns publicly, the CNG acted in
military fashion, dissolving the council.
The democratic forces, in turn, believ-
ing they would be able to impose the
elections on a reluctant regime on their
own terms, took to the streets. Maxi-
malists went so far as to demand the
immediate resignation of the military
from the CNG and the appointment of
a civilian junta of "men and women
of good will."
Although effective in the short term,
this mass action sowed the seeds for the
escalating level of conflict that took
place from August to November. While
in theory conceding that the elections
would take place under the aegis of the
electoral council, in practice the softlin-
ers within the regime, mostly identified
with career military officers like Nam-
phy ceded ground to the hardliners,
mostly Duvalierists like Prosper Avril.
The Tonton Macutes proceeded to do
whatever was necessary to preclude the
possibility of free and fair elections, the
raison d'&tre of the ensuing violence.
The tragic sequence of events in Haiti
in the fall of 1987 can in many ways
be read as the response of the ruling
coalition to the gauntlet thrown at them
by the maximalist sectors in July as to
"who really ruled Haiti."
The issue, of course, is not whether
"giving in" to the military would have
avoided the violence; it might have led
simply to peaceful but meaningless
elections instead. The real question is
whether a different sort of behavior on
the part of the democratic forces and its
leadership might have opened the door
to the sort of "founding elections" that
are so important to launch democratic
regimes after prolonged periods of authori-
tarian rule. Whatever else they may
have been, the 17 January elections
were no such thing.
The political party leadership was
handicapped by a number of factors.

Three decades of Duvalierism had deci-
mated it. Many years of exile had only
exacerbated the many divisions among
the anti-Duvalier forces, and the very
rapidity of the transition tended to
undermine the leadership. Holding elec-
tions for the constitutional assembly a
scarce eight months after the fall of
Baby Doc meant that much of the
established political leadership, just re-
turned from exile or otherwise in the
process of getting its party structure in
shape, decided to forego participating
in them. Rather than becoming the sort
of forum in which the key issues
confronting the country could be dis-
cussed at the highest level, the assem-
bly became essentially a sideshow. The
resulting constitutional charter, how-
ever well-intentioned in its curious ad-
mixture of presidentialism and parlia-
mentarism, fragmented power to such
a degree as to become a serious obstacle
to effective executive leadership.
What failed to materialize in Haiti
were the sort of mediating institutions
that might have brought together pro-
fessional military officers committed
to the restoration of some form of
democracy with the leadership of the
various political parties. This might
have led to the type of pact, like the
Pacto de Punto Fijo in Venezuela or
the Pacto del Club Naval in Uruguay,
that has been shown to be so important
in other cases of authoritarian transi-
tions. Ironically, a very partial attempt
at a working agreement (and then only
among the political leadership and
against the CNG) emerged only after
the 29 November elections, when the
four leading presidential candidates (Ger-
ard Gourgue, Marc Bazin, Sylvio Claude
and Louis Dejoie) formed a united front
in their refusal to participate in the 17
January elections. But by then it was
already too late.
Manigat's action in firing Namphy
certainly showed he was nobody's pup-
pet He did what he had to do at some
point establish that he was "his own
man." Further, the country's elated
reaction to Namphy's ouster (as one
bus driver put it, "It took Manigat three
days to do what the country failed to
do in a year.") showed the potential
mass support Manigat could have started
to tap. Instead of leaving well enough
alone, he then overplayed his hand with
the large-scale reshuffling of the army,
which was his undoing.
Once again, however, the democratic
forces in the opposition had little or no

communication with those in the gov-
ernment, thus effectively precluding the
possibility of, say, a gigantic mass rally
on Saturday in support of the president
and against any putschist temptation.

Dealing with the Army

The departure of Jean-Claude Duvalier
provided the event that is so often
needed to initiate authoritarian tran-
sitions the equivalent of the death
of Franco in Spain or of the military
defeat suffered by Greece in Cyprus in
1974 or by Argentina in the Malvinas
in 1982. But not having suffered any
military defeat, the Haitian Armed Forces
after the fall of Duvalier continued to
be one of the country's strongest insti-
tutions. In failing to acknowledge their
interests and concerns, the bulk of the
political leadership made a cardinal
political mistake. And it was the recog-
nition of this reality, probably more
than any other factor, that propelled
Leslie Manigat into the Palais National.
What was the nature of the threat,
as perceived by the army? It was less
the imminence of any sort of social
revolution, something that was never
really in the cards in the Haitian transi-
tion, than concern as to what any
emerging democratic regime would do
on the twin issues of Duvalierist crimes
and of corruption. Whereas a candidate
supported by the left, like Gourgue,
might have been perceived as more
likely to take action on the former, the
candidate of the right, Bazin, was more
likely to clamp down heavily on the
latter. In any event, and despite the
complex moral choices and trade-offs
negotiations on such issues entails, the
possibility of a working agreement or
pacto among the leading presidential
candidates and the army as to how to
deal with the army is not too difficult
to envision. Without a highly self-
conscious attempt on the part of the
political leadership to assuage the armed
forces and reach some sort of compro-
mise on the likely terms of coexistence
between the successor regime and the
military, a transition may be doomed.
A mobilized population is a powerful
weapon of the democratic forces in
such transitions, but it is no substitute
for concerted action at the highest
levels of leadership between those in
the opposition and those within the
regime that are committed to democrati-
zation. 0

26/CARIBBEAN REVIEW

The Little Game
Continued from page 7

chosen by the military.
This struggle, which began the 23rd
of June and lasted two months, pitted
against each other the democratic sec-
tor, represented by the Group of 57, and
the CNG. It exposed the true intentions
of the military, their methods and their
objectives. Very skillfully, the CNG
under American pressure pretended to
give in. On 10 July 1987, it accepted
the formation of an independent elec-
toral council, while at the same time
taking positions that would paralyze its
work: first through the maintenance of
a very high level of insecurity and
repression throughout the country, open-
ing fire without hesitation on peaceful
gatherings (23 and 29 July 1987); then
physically attacking persons aligned with
the democratic sectors (the murder of
presidential candidate Athis on 2 August,
an attack against priests at Freycineau
on 23 August, the murder of Yves Volel
[another presidential candidate] on 13
October). This permanent violence cul-
minated during the month of November
with an open uniting of bands of armed
Macoute thugs who burned down the
offices of the CEP (Provisional Elec-
toral Council) on 4 November; every
night physically attacked members of
the democratic sector; and organized
on 29 November the massacre of Rue
Vaillant accompanied by open aggres-
sion against the foreign press and for-
eign observers.
Once more, therefore, as in 1946,
1950 and in 1956, the army wanted to
choose the holder of political power,
in accordance with the theory that "the
people are unable to choose the one
who is right for the circumstances."
At the same time they wanted to neu-
tralize the democratic sector which,
under the leadership of Konakom and
BIP (the Patriotic Unity Block) threw
itself into the electoral battle under the
banner of the United National Front,
and chose on 4 October, Gerard Gour-
gue as its candidate.
By the middle of November, after a
fast campaign, the front was considered
the most likely to win the 29 November
election, sharing the vote with the
MIDH (Movement for the Restoration
of Democracy in Haiti) of Marc Bazin,
the PAIN (National Agricultural and
Industrial Party) of Ddjoie and the
PDCH (Christian Democratic Party of

Haiti) of Sylvio Claude. The front alone
presented 47 candidates for 77 deputies
and 18 candidates for 27 senators under
the sign of the Rising Sun.
This was a new political happening
being born that November, unheard of
since 1804. For the National Front
represented at that time a coalition
which, unique in the history of Haiti,
comprised the peasants, church groups,
unions, and professional associations.
It was, therefore, the whole nation that,
within the four main parties, found a
solution beyond the artificial cleavage
maintained by the noiristes demagogues
or the bookish ideologues.
The army strategists and the Duval-
ierists decided to stop this national
wave. But were they alone? There are
indications that lead us to believe that
certain businessmen and members of
the traditional bourgeoisie, as well as
perhaps certain agencies tied to the
American Embassy, running scared by
the probability of reforms that could
endanger the status quo, may have been
accomplices of the operation that would
deny the 2,220,000 people who were
registered, the possibility of exercising
their right to vote for the first time since
independence.
This business sector, as well as the
army/Duvalierist sector, have been in-
volved for years in the exploitation of
international aid for their own profit
- not to say also being involved in
drug trafficking and contraband. Those
are the main interests that pushed for-
ward the murders of 29 November and
that would again join together to make
possible the Manigat operation. Those

who chose to back the 29 November
show of force -the blocking by blood-
shed of popular expression and
amongst those one must count Mr.
Seaga, Mrs. Charles, and Mr. Hilarion
Cardozo from ODCA were helped
on this occasion by a few personalities
from Acci6n Democratica, the party in
power in Venezuela. These people have
only succeeded in delaying the true
solution to the Haitian political crisis.
The call for a personality of interna-
tional stature, Prof. Leslie Manigat,
rendered only more pathetic the opera-
tion of 17 January 1988. How would
one be able to govern a country when
over 90% of the electorate had boy-
cotted the elections? How could one
reform the state after 30 years of
dictatorship if one did not have a
majority in the two chambers; if the
army was beyond the control of the
government, the administration itself
stuffed with Duvalierists, and armed
bands of Macoutes were benefiting from
the complicity of the armed forces; if
the churches, the unions, the popular
groups, the political parties which rep-
resent all these people had been pushed
aside by the events? They had been
pushed aside and kept away from the
political process.
One watched the impotence of the
Manigat government, and the potential
of the political forces that he did not
control. Four months after the arrival
of the new government, these questions
came to a head. Had the little game of
17 January been successful, one would
have to believe that magic exists in
politics too. t'

CARIBBEAN REVIEW/27

AA
A 1987 victim (Photo: J. B. Diederich)

Haiti, June 1987 (Photo: J. B. Diederich)

Leslie Manigat
Continued from page 9

BBL: There has been some cheap
speculation that you had ordered
Namphy to dismiss Paul as part of a
deal to get back American aid.

LFM: That is absolutely false. I am
calling that not only untrue, but it is a
deliberate lie. Never, never did I make
a deal about Jean-Claude Paul. In Haiti
we had two texts published in the same
day. First, my decision to revoke the
measure taken by Namphy, by order of
the president, the constitutional head
of the army. Then after awhile, we had
the communique of the army itself and
this communique retracted Namphy's
original decision. They never said, "But
you, Mr. President, have given these
orders," because they knew it wasn't
true. If people want to speculate about
rumors, about misperceptions, about
misinformation, that is their own busi-
ness, but scholars should check their
facts when doing analysis.

BBL: What did you do afterwards?
The speculation now is that dismiss-
ing Namphy wasn't what caused the
coup but your activity afterwards...

LFM: The coup was premeditated. We
had indications about the preparation
of the coup in the Province of St. Marc
incident [where there was an anti-
Manigat demonstration against his deci-
sion to replace the director of customs].
It was quite revealing of what Namphy
was doing. Everywhere we had reports
that Namphy was preparing the coup.
When he decided to move the colonels,
it was the beginning of the coup,
because not only Paul told him that he
was loyal to my government as a
military man, but the other officers who
were moved were also friendly to my
government. You must realize that his
decision in itself started the whole
process but the planing of the coup was
already underway.

BBL: Did you have forces that could
have kept Namphy under arrest?

LFM: He was put under house arrest.
The house was totally circled by troops
from the Casernes Dessalines, from the
presidential palace. The telephone lines
were cut, so he was isolated.

BBL: Why did Paul change and join
the others?

LFM: Paul changed later, only after
my departure. During the night, Paul
was still there ready to defend the
Dessalines Barracks, but Paul was not
the central person in all that. All the
colonels of all the quarters were sup-
posed to be loyal to me. They told me
that, when I called them. I realized that
we were going to have a serious prob-
lem because we had won. For every-
body in Haiti we had won, for abso-
lutely everyone, even outside Haiti,
Manigat had won.

BBL: How did you lose control?

LFM: Everything happened at the in-
itiation of a few officers that I had taken
sanctions against... Col. Avril had been
removed from the palace to army head-
quarters; he took that as a sanction. But
two other senior officers, Augustin and
Marc Charles, I removed them from the
presidential guard and they took this
as sanctions against them. And it is
mainly these three, Avril, Augustin and
Marc Charles, who decided along with
General Lh6risson (Among the meas-
ures I had taken, I had also put Lh6ris-
son into retirement) they decided to
organize the coup.
With the help of several sergeants,
they took over the armored section of
the army with two tanks. And it is with
these two tanks that they went into the
house of Namphy to take General Nam-
phy out of custody and bring him into
the National Palace.
When this happened and I learned
of it I said, "The problem is very
simple now. He is within the National
Palace and we are going to dislodge
him from there." That is when the new
army commander-in-chief told me that,
"We are not willing to have a bloody
fight within the army. We have to avoid
that at all costs. I prefer to go to the
National Palace and discuss and negoti-
ate." I realized then that he was not
willing to fight. And it was the begin-
ning of the end, because with that
mentality in the high command of the
army to go to discuss with Namphy
- that meant they were not ready to
defend the constitutional government.
You see the problem, it is again
what I'm saying, the army officers
could not understand that their duty
was to fight the insubordination of
General Namphy and dislodge him from

the National Palace. They were not for
him, formally for him, but they were
not ready to go as far as fighting to
dislodge him from the National Palace.

BBL: Did you move too fast against
the army?

LFM: No I had no choice, because I
could not accept their violation of the
principles that were at stake. The basic
essential heart of the matter was the
supremacy of civilian power over the
military. Secondly, the coup was in the
making, a military coup against a con-
stitutional government. You cannot stay
passive. Finally, you see what we have
now is not only a military dictatorship,
not only the head is a military man, but
all the cabinet ministers are military
men, they have dissolved Congress and
govern by decree.
When a democrat is observing what
happened in Haiti, how can he hesitate:
you have the violation of the principle
of civilian supremacy over the military,
a military coup against the constitu-
tional government, the establishment
of a military dictatorship, you have
three principles, all of them are clearly
democratic principles which are vio-
lated in Haiti. I don't see how any
government, any organization, any indi-
vidual can hesitate... There is a clear
position to take against what happened
in Haiti.

BBL: But if you go back to that
calculated risk that you took when
you went into government, were the
odds against you too long? You now
say you had no choice because the
coup would have come if not last
week, next week.

LFM: It was in the making. It had
already started.

BBL: Your reaction was to a pending
coup. But had you not moved as fast,
would you still be in power today?

LFM: People are saying that I should
have eliminated General Namphy. My
answer is that many people who speak
of democracy are not that democratic.
What they wanted me to do was impos-
sible. I cannot be a democratic president
of a country and eliminate someone.
That would not have been possible.
That would have been a dictatorship.
That would have been Duvalierism. It
was within my conviction as a demo-

28/CARIBBEAN REVIEW

cratic president of Haiti that I had
limitations and that I could not elimi-
nate someone. I had a democratic reac-
tion. Of course, I accept that Duvalier
would not have taken that direction, but
it is the risk of democracy. I cannot
physically eliminate an adversary. I
tried to neutralize Namphy, that's quite
different, I put him under house arrest.
This I could do, this is normal in a
democracy, but to eliminate a man,
nobody can count on Manigat for doing
that. Absolutely not.

BBL: The people who criticized you
for not eliminating the man, are they
the same people who said you your-
self had dictatorial instincts?

LFM: Of course, of course. I can tell
you I have no resentment I feel I did
what I had to do. While in power under
a governmental crisis I think I did the
correct things to do. Now it happened
that a dictator could have saved his
government, but I am happy that I did
not go through that kind of governmen-
tal action to save my government. I
prefer to be out of power. But my hands
are clean and my principles respected.

BBL: How come you couldn't gener-
ate more support. There was so much
resentment about your taking power.

LFM: That's the problem. We have in
Haiti a curious type of political leader-
ship. Some political leaders never, never
went beyond the 29th of November.
As if Haitian history had stopped on the
29th of November. Some others were
more than wishing the failure of my
government. They said, "Now you see,
we were right and now we have our
chance." According to some, I have
been eliminated from the race, now the
way is open for them to become presi-
dent. A full mistake. They do not know
what the military is or what the military
thinks of them.
When people realized what I was
doing in power, I think at that moment,
the true democratic leaders should have
supported the government. Because sup-
porting the government was not sup-
porting Manigat, it was supporting the
cause of democracy in Haiti, the cause
of honesty in Haiti, the cause of a
government of social justice in Haiti.
When we started to take some hard
decisions, for example, to separate the
police from the army, the army did not
want it. General Namphy told me so.

We decided to do it anyway and we
submitted to Congress the law separat-
ing the police from the army.
A serious democratic leader should
have said, "Manigat is on the right
track, he is taking the risk and we
should support him because we are
supporting ourselves." I told them that
I was incarnating the cause of democ-
racy, that if something happened to me
it would not only be to me but to the
cause of democracy, to them. I told
them, "In power, I am your shield,
your protection." They did not realize
that. Now we have a military dictator-
ship.
The Catholic Church, for example,
which was hesitant and critical at the
beginning, decided to accept full and
public reconciliation with me. It was
exactly one week before the events. It
was too late.

BBL: But the Catholic Church was
upset with your critical remarks just
before the 29th.

LFM: I was critical of certain priests
who were actively, militantly organiz-
ing the radicalization of the crisis with
leftist doctrines. I thought that if we
radicalize the situation we will have a
class confrontation, we'll have a civil
war, we'll have foreign military inter-
vention. It was only through the demo-
cratic way that we could preserve the
chance for democracy. That was what
I said. I didn't criticize the church, I
am a Christian myself. I was criticizing
the political behavior of some radical
elements who did not realize that if we
don't do it the democratic way, democ-
racy will be killed immediately.

BBL: How come the press was never
more supportive and what was your
attitude toward the press?

LFM: Let me tell you I think here we
made many mistakes. We have made a
mistake in the sense that unfortunately
for the government, the majority of the
media were hostile obstacles to us. I
think this is something we must realize
that we in power did not organize a
sector of the media favorable enough
to the government so therefore there
was no balance in the way the media
was acting. There was no balanced
views coming from the media. We were
trying to remedy that, but we did not
have the time. We were only four
months in power.

BBL: What about the US Congres-
sional Black caucus?

LFM: Oh, that's another matter, you
see. This is very delicate and I'm not
going to go into detail. I can only say
that the Black caucus stopped the his-
tory of Haiti on November 29. Some
of them had a candidate in Haiti and
this candidate was not able to cope with
the realities and succeed. The fact that
this candidate was not in power and
they had had a commitment to this
candidate explained that unfortunately
they misunderstood Haitian realities.
When you have a new government,
with competent people, fully dedicated
to the will of the masses, trying to
organize the country, trying to have
social justice in the country, honest
people, you have to support them. You
cannot say, "Well, before you, some
people behaved in the wrong way and
you must be punished for that." That
is nonsense, we were the new govern-
ment, we were the new team of people.
We were accepted, perceived and ad-
mitted as competent, honest, democrati-
cally-minded. If there is such a team
you have to support it. They did not
realize what was at stake in Haiti. They
thought that the military was still in
power. But the military had not been
in power since the 7th of February!
If we had had the support of the US
not the political support, that was
expressed many times but if we had
had the economic aid of the US, we
would have strengthened the govern-
ment by realizing works in favor of the
masses. It would have given satisfaction
to the legitimate impatience of the
masses and we would have the masses
with us more solidly, more explicitly.
And this would have strengthened the
government vis-h-vis the military threat.
Therefore, there is an indirect responsibil-
ity for those who have not understood
that they had to support us because we
incarnated the cause of democracy.
For the first time in Haitian history,
the government was able to define itself
as oriented toward the rural masses and
create a new ministry of cooperatives
to show the new direction. For the first
time in Haitian history, the government
created a ministry of cultural affairs to
give the people the feeling of their
dignity, their identity and to use that
as a tool for development. For the first
time, the woman in Haiti who is impor-
tant in all fields but is treated as inferior
had a ministry of woman's affairs in

CARIBBEAN REVIEW29

ICol. J. C. Paul (Photo: J. B. Diederich)

order to articulate the value of women
in our society.
For the first time in the history of
Haiti, you see a new government start-
ing new programs, announcing new
programs, restructuring the ministries
in order to direct the action of the
government toward the masses. For the
first time in the history of Haiti, you
have a president coming periodically
to speak to the people, to explain the
situation, to justify his action, to offer
prospects, to ask for criticism, regularly
and in Creole, with chats to the people
and with press conferences, making
democracy transparent for all to see.
This is something that people will
not forget, these are seeds that are going
to germinate. That's what will happen
in Haiti. I am optimistic now about the
future of Haiti. Because now these
values and principles, these organiza-
tional policies, this social justice im-
perative, this development we wanted,
the democratization we were pushing
- the people have seen the government
doing that. They will not forget that.

BBL: Leslie, there are people that say
the situation now is not better, that
it's not that you've set the seeds for
the future, but that the situation is
actually worse.

LFM: People who say that don't fully
realize what has now happened in Haiti.
First of all you have a new military
government This government is weak
in spite of the fact that it is military.
Do these people know exactly what is
the relationship between the high com-
manding officers? I know myself, I
have seen all their dirty things. I know.
I can tell you that every single member
of the new government knows who is
his enemy, who is trying to eliminate
him at any moment. That is the kind
of solidarity that you have. It's an
artificial temporary type of solidarity. I
know from inside. Each of them told
me what they think of the other. You
see, there is absolutely no true solidar-
ity in Haiti today among the high
ranking officers.
I can tell you one thing. When I
decided to relieve General Namphy
from his high command position, 90%
of the officials of the army approved it.

BBL: So how did Namphy get back?

LFM: I told you the army is under
stress. The stress of the 25th of May
1957 when they were divided and they
started to fight one commander against
the other. They don't want that to come
back anymore. So therefore they avoid
any bloody confrontation. And also
Namphy was able to tell them "Let us
constitute the army in front of the
civilian power." This also is an old
tradition of the solidity of the army
against the civilian institution or indi-
vidual or government.
But what is happening is that many
officers have changed their minds these
last months or these last years since the
fall of Duvalier. I can tell you many
officials had fully accepted our program
of democratization, modernization of
the army and putting the army at the
service of development. A lot of them
had accepted the program. And they
still think that way.

BBL: Where then will the new sparks
come from, the new hope?

LFM: From the very experience we
have had in power. The seeds that we
have put in Haitian minds and realities.
When it was reported that there was
no reaction to the coup, that is ridicu-
lous.
People who say that, don't know
Haitian history. Dumarsais Estim6, on
the 8th of May 1950, had mass demon-

30/CARIBBEAN REVIEW

stations in the cities in favor of his
government, at the top of his popularity.
Two days later, the 10th of May,
General Magloire overthrew Dumarsais
Estim6 and there was nobody in the
streets. Even though he was very popu-
lar, when he was overthrown, there was
nobody in the streets.
You must realize that the Haitian
people have learned by experience that
it is not by going into the street that
you can react against a military coup. I
know this reaction, I have seen this
reaction in the eyes of the people when
I was going with my wife to take the
plane, I saw the sadness in their eyes.
Some even were audacious enough to
approach us and say words of encour-
agement. When the plane took the air,
some of them, in spite of the presence
of others there, waved to say good-bye.
The Haitian people have learned by
experience that they don't have to
expose themselves to any bloody re-
pression with their empty hands, but
their reaction is internal.
They have seen a team in power that
was really working for them, working
for what they did not believe possible
and because it was honest, fighting
against corruption, fighting against smug-
gling, democratization of the process,
the modernization of the institutions,
the separation of the police from the
army, transparency in government, no
they cannot forget that, it is impossi-
ble...

BBL: But can they reinstitute it?

LFM: We are in the fight because I
have not abandoned the fight, on the
contrary for me the process has only
been suspended. We are there to fight
for the restoration of the democratiza-
tion process in Haiti. Life goes on and
th- struggle also.

BBL: You're still optimistic?

LFM: Very optimistic. More optimistic
now than before because now we have
had the experience of power, we have
had the experience of governing that
country, of evaluating the forces, of
seeing the individual actors, of seeing
institutions. I can tell you, we had much
more support than many people believe.
Much more.

BBL: Some of the reports suggest
that it was the soldiers themselves
who wanted the coup.

LFM: The three officers took with them
some soldiers of the presidential guard
while the colonel in charge was away
from the National Palace, absent from
his command. Soldiers think that first
of all they have to obey their officers,
and many soldiers believe that a mili-
tary government in power is their gov-
ernment in power. I think it is quite
natural that some of the soldiers de-
cided to participate in the coup follow-
ing the three officers.
They did not come from outside the
Palace. They were officers of the presi-
dential guard that I had removed, but
before abandoning their command, they
attempted the coup and succeeded.
Which is for me not a surprise. It is the
way Magloire came into and also left
power.
We are still in a country where the
structures don't play in favor of democ-
racy. You have to change this. They are
traditional structures which for long
have been at the service of archaisme,
dictatorship, social injustice and so on.
We have to put new structures in place
to serve the course of democracy. That's
what we had begun to do. But we had
only four months of a five-year man-
date. We were just at the beginning of
the process of change.

BBL: Did you feel the pressure to
push the change with the army?

LFM: Yes, definitely. Because we real-
ized that it was not possible to make
any serious effort if we had the present
command of the army in control. What
happened in St. Marc: We decided to
extend to the harbor of St Marc our
policy against smuggling and we sent
a team there to establish custom regula-
tions. But a group of armed men took
to the streets shouting "Down with
Manigat, long live the army." Who
organized such manifestations? What
did the army have to with it? It was a
clear revelation. The captain who was
the military commander of the district
of St. Marc was the organizer himself
of the smuggling. He was the organizer
of the street demonstration against my
government and he was Namphy's man.

BBL: Give me possible scenarios for
change now.

LFM: There will be some kind of
change under the present system and
we have to watch closely the evolution
of forces and the relationship between

individuals. Secondly, the institutions
in the country have not yet reacted.
We have to wait and see exactly how
the Church, how the cooperatives, how
the community development movement
in the rural areas, how the profession-
als, how the newspapers and the mass
media, how the unions are going to
react. Thirdly, we have a lot of un-
solved problems in Haiti; we have
opened the way for their solution.
Now with the military coup there is
a setback on that; there are a lot of
unsolved problems urgently waiting for
a solution. The rural problem in Haiti
is a crucial one. In one of my cabinet
meetings I told my collaborators, while
we were restructuring the administra-
tion which was a big objective for the
future, we had an even more urgent
problem right away: the discontent of
the rural masses about the agrarian
problem, not only about hunger and
disease but about the agrarian problem,
already there were signs of instability
in the country. So therefore, we have a
very difficult situation. A critical situ-
ation. If the new regime does not get
economic aid from the US Is the
US going to give the military dictator-
ship the aid they refused us? If they
don't get that, it is going to be difficult
for them to govern the country. Diffi-
cult, very difficult.

BBL: Is it the same problem as
Panama? A civilian leader deposes a
military head and the military head
says "No matter." They put all sorts
of pressure on Panama and Panama
is still ruled by a military dictator.

LFM: First of all Noriega has a certain
following within Panama. And second
of all there is the problem of Panaman-
ian nationalism, which creates confu-
sion because some people are against
Noriega but at the same time they are
nationalists vis-h-vis any interference
from the United States. Look at Latin
America, Latin America is really not
in favor of Noriega, Latin America is
in favor of the non-intervention princi-
ple.
In Haiti, the situation is different.
First of all we don't have that kind of
popular support for Namphy. Namphy
is only an accomplished fact, but I can
tell you that the day I fired Namphy
there was joy and cheerfulness in all the
country. As I just told you, there is an
aggregate in power which is not solid.
So therefore we have an internal weak-

ness in the Haitian system that does not
exist in Panama.
Haitian nationalism cannot be in fa-
vor of Namphy, because what Namphy
is doing is the contrary. We had in
power a nationalistic government which
has now been overthrown. Since Nam-
phy needs foreign aid to maintain him-
self, we don't expect him to mobilize
Haitian nationalism against foreign in-
terference. The history of the two coun-
tries are so different, I think that people
are wrong to make a kind of analogy
between the Panamanian and Haitian
situations.

BBL: Give me scenarios, what is next
for Leslie Manigat?

LFM: For myself there is no problem.
I am in the fight, I am reorganizing
my movement I am trying to explain
internationally what happened in Haiti,
to organize support, to mobilize our
forces, to reorganize them. We have
launched from Santo Domingo a sol-
emn and fraternal appeal to all democrats
of the country inside and outside Haiti
to unite for that objective of restoring
the process of democratization. And at
the same time I am asking all the
democrats of the world to support us. I
am optimistic because I think we are
stronger now then we were before.

CARIBBEAN REVIEW/31

PROCRESSISTE

4'
Candidate Leslie Manigat
(Photo J. B. Diederich)

BBL: What about your future politi-
cal role?

LFM: I'm at the disposal of my people.
I could say but I am not saying that
this way but I could say that I am
still the constitutional president, be-
cause I never signed a letter of resigna-
tion. They asked me to make a letter
of resignation and I refused. They asked
me to write something and I said, "If
you would like I write for you that I
observed that General Namphy said
that he took power and I can say that
the army organized a coup. That is all
that I can say, but I am not resigning
as the president of Haiti, I am still the
constitutional president." But I am not
putting anything this way.
For me it is evident that I am still the
constitutional president of Haiti, but
what is most important for the Haitian
people is the restoration of the process
of democratization. So therefore I am
in the fight, I am in the struggle for
continuing that restoration. Since I've
been president for 130 days this gave
me a position of leadership, definitely.
But I'm not saying that I want people
to unite behind me. I want them to unite
with me contributing to the struggle.
We have to organize the RDNP, our
party, because it will be the central
pillar of the action that I am contem-
plating for the restoration of democracy
in my country.

BBL: You were quoted in the news-
paper as saying that you don't think
of yourself as a future president, that
you want to go back to academia.

LFM: That is not exactly what I said. I
said that I don't want to put as a sine
qua non condition to fight for the
democratization process that I be ac-
cepted as the future president of Haiti.
I said that while I'm fighting for the
democratization process I am willing
to be a political leader given the role
that I've played.
But after that political parenthesis in
my life, what I would like to do is to
go back to my academic activities. I
have four long books, even the titles are
there, and the initial structures of the
books are there, to write. I am a
university professor for 35 years; I had
been president for 130 days. I became
a political activist in 1979 because I
had to, but at the end of my life what
I would like to be is a professor, writing
and thinking. a

Gerard Latortue
Continued from page 9

of splitting the army?

GRL: No, no. I think it is not reason-
able to assume he had premeditated to
split the army. He thought he could
establish a dialogue with the army
through which you would convince
them to get involved in that double
process of development and democrati-
zation.

BBL: Yes, but many withheld sup-
port because they characterized him
as a puppet of the army. Their argu-
ment was that since he was there
because of the army, he was nothing
more than their representative.

GRL: Yes, that was what the critique
said. What do you want me to say at
this point. A large group of people said
that he would have been a puppet of
the army, but other people who knew
him had said that he does not look like
someone who could be a puppet of
anyone. But they did not trust him, they
did not give him the support he needed.
So I agree with you that he lacked the
support of those who could have helped
him to succeed.

BBL: What did you and Leslie mean
by the modernization of the army?

GRL: To equip the army and have it
involved in development work. One of
the first projects we were doing was the
construction of low cost housing with
the participation of the Haitian army
with the Venezuelan army. Leslie thought
that he could plan a good program to
motivate the army to get involved in
development work. But four months is
a very short period to do all this.
Moreover, the work of the govern-
ment was blocked by the fact that all
the organic laws, the laws to organize
the ministries, had to go to parliament
and the parliament had blocked them.
At the time the government was over-
thrown, there had been no organiza-
tional law for any of the ministries
except the ministry of cultural affairs.
We hoped that by having a ministry
of defense that would have been in the
government that the ministry of defense
would have been the main channel to
work out the new relations between
army and government and army and the

population. The defense minister was
Gen. Williams Regala.

BBL: But Regala was not very well
liked and was always suspected.

GRL: This is true but he was the man
designated by the armed forces to be
the minister of defense. Manigat wanted
to follow the Venezuelan pattern. When
R6mulo Betancourt came to power,
they created the ministry of defense and
asked the army to designate someone
as defense minister, the government
always accepting the person designated
by the army. We followed this model.

BBL: How do you deal with the
military, try to convince them to
support you, and go after corruption,
when the source of the corruption is
in the military?

GRL: Well, but you know, all this you
discover after you are in power. We
knew there was a lot of corruption in
the country but it was only after we
were in power that we realized the
amplitude of the corruption and the
number of people involved in it and the
kind of people involved in it. Some-
times I don't know how we can get out
of that corruption in this country peace-
fully.

BBL: If you knew then what you
know now would you have tried to
do what you did?

GRL: Well, yes. In any case one would
have to try because otherwise it would
be to acknowledge the fact that there
is no hope for Haiti. We believe there
should be hope for Haiti and we have
to mobilize and to motivate the popula-
tion, in order to have the necessary
popular support to change the present
situation.
I don't know how any patriot, any
Haitian who loves his country, could
accept or take a position of resignation
and say that, "Well, this is a historic
fatality, Haiti has to be a corrupt na-
tion."
I believe one has to try and to try
again to fight against corruption, to
fight against mediocrity because the day
must come when the most capable
Haitians, the most able Haitians, the
most talented Haitians, the most honest
Haitians should have the possibility to
be in power and to help the poorest of
the poor Haitians have a better life.

32/CARIBBEAN REVIEW

BBL: But many people say that
Leslie's attempt and failure make it
even more difficult.

GRL: I don't think so, I don't share
this view. I believe that there will be
probably many other failures before
success will come. But success will
come.

BBL: What was your role in the
relationship between Leslie and the
army? I know you were Namphy's
roommate when you were younger.

GRL: I had no particular official role,
but I have been all the time trying to
keep communication open between the
two men. I did whatever I could. But
you know, when you reach a crisis
situation, the voice of moderation is
not often heard and there have been
extremists on both sides, some telling
Manigat, "You should get rid of Nam-
phy," and others going to Namphy to
tell him, "You can't cooperate with
those people." The moderates always
lose in a situation like that and the
extremists are those who are more
vociferous; they speak loudly and ap-
pear to be more convincing and the
protagonists sometimes follow the voices
of the extremes rather than the voices
of moderation and compromise.

BBL: What happened that Leslie was
not able to generate more support?

GRL: For one reason or another a large
segment of the population did not want
to give him support at the beginning
because many sectors did not want to
participate in the January 17th election
and Leslie did participate. Even many
who saw his election in a positive way,
who said that he was basically a good
person and that he had a good cabinet,
they took a wait-and-see attitude and
were waiting for the day when Manigat
would send signals that he was really
in control to come and help him.
But this was a very dangerous game.
How could you succeed if you didn't
have the support of the people who
could have helped you succeed? It is a
chicken and egg situation. Which one
comes first? Here again, I think Leslie
has been a victim of that situation.

BBL: What about the lack of support
from intellectuals, not just Haitian
intellectuals? It seems to me that
there was a very ungenerous attitude

on the part of intellectuals who knew
Leslie and who knew you and who
knew that you weren't some kind of
tin-horn dictators.

GRL: Some of them did give strong
support, but is was vocal support and
no action. Several American scholars
who knew Manigat as a scholar were
trying to project a different image of
him than the one that some Haitian-
American community leaders living in
the US and Canada were trying to
promote. Every day was bringing some
more support when they saw what we
wanted to do. But here again, you know
the coup came after just four months,
at the time when the support was
coming...

BBL: Was there anyway to generate
support earlier?

GRL: We were just organizing our-
selves. Some analysts said that the coup
came because those who wanted to
overthrow Leslie realized that if they
left our team in power for more than six
months, the government would have
made its term, the full five years. The
extremists who had been telling some
segments of the army that they should
take back the power were among the
most corrupt And they saw that with
the Leslie Manigat government there
would be no place for corruption, no
place for mediocrity. These people were
pressing for a coup and that is why it
happened so early. It is because there
had been strong indications that more
and more support was coming that...
Had the support been there the coup
would have been more difficult.
We were assessing the situation, we
were trying to see what we found in
this country. We faced a lot of barriers,
a lot of obstacles. Every day was a
different trap. We had to go around
them or go over them and this made
us waste a lot of time.
When you realize that the country
just came out of 29 years of dictator-
ship, 29 years of corruption, 29 years
of mediocrity, you know four months
is nothing. It is just enough time to get
accustomed to the decision-making proc-
ess, with what you have in your minis-
tries. Because most cabinet members
were new people, people who were not
involved in the government during the
Duvalier regime, we needed the time
to learn our jobs, to make an assessment
of what were the problems of each of

our different ministerial departments
and this all took time.

BBL: How come the press never
accepted Leslie? Some claim Leslie's
comportment was very professorial
and he was unable to reach the press.

GRL: I have also heard that critique. I
attended only one of his press confer-
ences, the last one. Well, he is a
professor, and you cannot deny that he
has a professorial style. But, on the
other hand, we never had in Haiti a
school of journalism so the large major-
ity of the members of the press did not
have the qualifications required in other
countries. This created a very uncom-
fortable situation.
Some of the journalists didn't know
the difference between a question and
a comment. They could speak for three
or four minutes and President Maingat
would say "Tell me what is your
question." That was an irritating factor
because it was done publicly and was
televised and a journalist might have
had the feeling that he was being
ridiculed by the president. He knew
about the complaints of some members
of the press who could not accept the
idea that they were treated as school
children. He was concerned about that,
he knew it was not what he wanted.
The press had not been accustomed
to the type of total freedom in which a
president would come and expose him-
self to open questions. It was a new
experience in which everybody was
trying to get a new equilibrium, a form
of adjustment, to see how to deal with
each other. I heard people saying during
his last press conference that he was
less professorial and also he had better
questions. So, here again, I come back
to the time factor. I was hopeful that
with time the situation would have
changed.

BBL:What about the resistance of the
Black caucus in the US Congress?

GRL: I believe it was a question of lack
of information. The Black caucus was
receiving information only from one
side, i.e., the opposition. I went to
Washington, the 4th through the 9th of
June, and I had contact with some
members of the Black caucus. I told
them about the kind of grass roots
development we were working on and
how serious we were about our commit-
ment to implementing democracy -

CARIBBEAN EVIEW/33

but recognizing that democracy is a
process there is no instant democ-
racy like instant coffee!
I can tell you we got the understand-
ing of Mr. Fauntroy and Mr. Rangel, I
met both of them together. They had
not known what we were really trying
to do in Haiti. The problem was that
there was almost no contact between
the government and the Black caucus.
I got the feeling when I met them
that there were people in the Black
caucus who were genuinely, sincerely
interested in Haiti. After the 29th of
November, they were emotionally upset
by what took place and they went as
far as promoting sanctions against a
nation, a people they pretended to love.
This could be explained perhaps as the
reverse, as the consequence of their
love for the country.
But after I met them in early June
I was supposed to meet them for
half an hour, we spent two hours
together I'm telling you, the nor-
malization was on its way.

BBL: What about the relations with
other governments? BusinessWeek in-
dicated that Haiti was about to get
all sorts of money.

GRL: I think one success of the Mani-
gat government was that in four months
we were about to get Haiti out of the
isolation in which the country had
fallen. We were able to make Haiti
more credible to the point that most of
our foreign partners were ready to
become serious partners to help in the
development of Haiti. Only the US was
not there, but I have strong reasons to
believe it was coming.

BBL: Did Leslie move too fast?

GRL: I was surprised by the speed he
used from Friday morning to Sunday.
It took me by surprise. It was on TV
that I learned about the ouster of
General Namphy and on Sunday morn-
ing I learned about the other changes.
I didn't have a chance to discuss with
Leslie in detail the reasons for that
precipitation. After the press conference
on Thursday in which Manigat ex-
pressed a strong homage to the army, I
thought the crisis was over at least for
the time. And suddenly I saw a precipi-
tation. I really didn't know what hap-
pened. Usually, I saw or I talked with
the president everyday, but on the
Friday when he ousted General Nam-

phy, it happens that I didn't tealk to
Leslie until the evening when he called
me to come and see him.
It was during that time that all those
basic decisions were made. Suddenly
he had information that I didn't have
that convinced him it was the right
course of action. Personally, I had
hoped that Manigat and Namphy could
get together and if they had done it, I'm
sure it would have been in the interest
of Haiti.

BBL: What will you do now?

GRL: I am going back to Vienna to
UNIDO. After that experience I want
to stay a little bit away from active
politics. I personally was very disap-
pointed that I could not contribute to
the development of my country during
a longer period.

BBL: Are you still optimistic that
something can be done?

GRL: There is always hope for a
country. What we need is to have a
large consensus on some specific objec-
tives to be implemented by a group of
competent and honest Haitians.

BBL: Does any other way than the
way Leslie tried offer more hope for
success?

GRL: I think the way Leslie tried to
do it was valid. It is why I took the risk
with him, because he tried to get
through. But the other people worked
very fast because they saw that our
presence in the government would sud-
denly reduce corruption, would reduce
contraband, would reduce the role of
mediocre people in the decision-making
process of the nation. So they decided
to organize the coup.
Perhaps, a president elected with
more popular support could do more
next time. The transition to democracy
after a long dictatorship is very diffi-
cult.
Geopolitical reasons will not allow
Haiti to have a revolution i la Cuba or
Nicaragua. But one should look for
another kind of revolution in Haiti
which will free us from the local
exploiters of the Haitian people.
We need to bring democracy and
development to Haiti before 1 January
2004 when we celebrate the 200th
anniversary of our national independ-
ence. U

34/CARIBBEAN REVIEW

The Haitian Press
Continued from page 12

military institution have together and
in concert given the nation a lesson in
patriotism and democracy. This lesson
allows us to feel optimistic about the
future in Haiti.... To both, thus, falls the
merit of this felicitous solution. Both
must be congratulated."

Anyone Listening?

No blood was shed, but it was no love
feast either. For some it was a convinc-
ing performance; for others it was far
from reality. "When he forgets about
his devils, his resentment and rancor
against those who don't love him, he
can be good and sincere," explained
one political adversary admitting he had
applauded Manigat's conclusion that
"corruption" was Haiti's major prob-
lem and that "the moral fiber of the
Haitian had been destroyed and must
be rebuilt."
"The tragedy of Manigat," explained
a Haitian social scientist, "is that de-
spite his superior personality and
he knows what he is talking about -he
tends to turn people off, reject them.
He remains alone. It's part of his
personality. He wants to maintain a
teacher-student relationship, and if it's
a relationship that requires equality, he
breaks it. All his talking, imposing his
own conclusions, his own decisions is
part of his character that sets him alone.
He is a master of words, not of ac-
tions."
Were Haitians listening to Manigat?
In those first days of June, Haitians
appeared to have given up on words.
Whether from apathy or shock, many
Haitians were indulging in "avoidance
behavior," turning away from the pain.
In early June they were still suffering
a mixture of disgust and indifference,
having lost hope on the two-year emo-
tional political roller-coaster ride in
search of change and a better life.
Nor was Manigat getting his message
across abroad. Don Bohning, Latin Ameri-
can editor of The Miami Herald and
a longtime veteran of reporting on Haiti
and the rest of the Caribbean, notes
that Manigat's relationship with the
foreign press had been excellent during
the period leading up to the 29 Novem-
ber elections. He had provided astute
observations and analyses of the politi-

cal situation. "But once he decided to
participate in the 17 January army-run
elections," says Bohning, "his attitude
towards foreign journalists seemed to
change; he became more defensive,
even arrogant. He turned a lot of
foreign journalists off by refusing to
acknowledge any serious irregularities
in the 17 January vote, insisting that
by Third World standards the vote was
legitimate and the turnout substantial.
Journalists there knew better."
"From that time on, his relations
appeared to deteriorate; he never missed
an opportunity to criticize foreign re-
porting of his election. Once he was in
the presidency, I think he could have
done quite a bit to improve his relations
with foreign journalists had he agreed
to one-on-one interviews with visiting
correspondents and thereby try to over-
come the widespread perception in the
United States and elsewhere that he was
a puppet of the military. Instead, he
essentially limited his press contacts to
once-a-month press conferences, which
he used more as a stage for his own
performance than a forum to provide
meaningful information.

"The bottom line is that his press
relations, especially with the regulars
of the foreign press who covered Haiti,
were virtually nonexistent and at a time
when he might have cultivated and used
them to create a better image abroad,
i.e., in Washington, for his presidency."
Don Schanche, of The Los Angeles
Times, a 40-year veteran in the profes-
sion, said foreign newspeople found
Manigat to be aloof and scornful of the
US press after the 17 January vote,
"because he knew that every time we
wrote about him we mentioned his
flawed election, which he refused to
acknowledge."
Perhaps because of Manigat's failure
to communicate with the press to
explain what he was doing, there re-
mains a tremendous amount of igno-
rance and suspicion even after he was
deposed on Monday 20 June 1988.
Thus, as in US academic circles, many
knowledgeable about Haiti wrestled with
their consciences and searched for news
clips to explain the short-lived Manigat
administration. Despite his efforts, Ma-
nigat received low marks as a commu-
nicator. 0

cooked in its own fat." This is not to
say that those two papers were always
what the Haitians call "musique Palais,"
which is the palace band that plays
"Hail to the Chief" for the president.
At times the papers have been known
to attack the government, and their
attacks were feared because, unlike the
other partisan papers, they were well
documented.
The following example illustrates the
difference between the fate of the Ameri-
can critic and the Haitian: In an inter-
view with Playboy, the satirist Mort
Sahl relates that he had become the
idol of the Kennedy group because he
was making fun of Eisenhower and
Nixon. Kennedy became president and
Mort Sahl made him the target of his
sallies. Kennedy was furious, but all
he could do was take Sahl's name off
the list of guests for White House
receptions. In Haiti, the irrepressible
Georges J. Petit went to jail more than
20 times from the time of the American
occupation in 1928 up to Papa Doc's
time. Such are the risks of the trade.
The press has fought great ideologi-
cal battles, such as the first, in 1902,
which centered around the intellectual
Antenor Firmin. Pierre Fr6d6rique, the
talented journalist who did not know
the meaning of the word fear, threw
away his pen and took up a gun to fight
for his ideals. Before that there had
been the long battle between the nation-
als and the liberals, when the best
minds of the time such as Delorme and
Paul, after a long ideological struggle,
abandoned the arm of logic for the logic
of arms.
During the American occupation, the
Grand Provost closed Elie Guerin's

CARMBBEAN
REVIEW is
available in microform
from University
Microfilms
International.

papers as fast as Guerin could print
them. Jolibois, who shared Guerin's
cells many times, brought the liberation
fight onto the international scene. Trav-
eling ceaselessly, writing, speaking, he
went all over the Americas, focusing
the attention of the world on the Haitian
plight. The performance of the press
was, at that time, truly magnificent. It
was the action of the many journalists
that awakened the conscience of the
American Senator W. H. King, who led
a persistent and noble fight on Haiti's
behalf in the US Senate.
After the occupation, journalism be-
came more modern; the dailies became
better equipped and the language more
moderate, perhaps because the govern-
ments were somewhat more stable. In
1946, things erupted again. In 1957
Papa Doc swooped brutally upon the
press and closed it tightly, but the
caldron continued boiling until it ex-
ploded in 1986 to send Baby Doc and
his cronies flying away.
The two dailies, Le Nouvelliste and
Le Matin, are still around and will be
for some time to come. Not only has a
whole flock of new weeklies emerged,
there is now a new element in the
picture: papers of the diaspora that are
also read in Haiti.
The written press had already been
facing the competition of radio; it now
has to cope not only with two local
TV stations but also, since the advent
of the parabolic antenna, with the pow-
erful American TV networks. What of
the future? There may be hope when
one thinks that even during the military
rule of the past two years, the press has
been relatively free. Censorship has
become increasingly difficult with the
sophistication of modem communica-
tions. So one may hope that someday
Haiti will finally enter a period of a
free press. 0

36/CARIBBEAN REVIEW

The Haitian Diaspora
Continued from page 15

an essential provisioning function for
the national market; students following
courses of study at overseas institutions.
The government of Duvalier junior
maintained an ambiguous attitude to-
ward emigration, somewhat similar to
that of a number of underdeveloped
countries with authoritarian regimes.
On the one hand emigration provided
a safety valve, allowing the escape of
active, intelligent and potentially con-
tentious elements. Duvalier systemati-
cally offered exile to his political oppo-
nents and even to his own supporters
who had fallen out of favor. This was
the "liberal" aspect of his dictatorship
(his father preferred death or imprison-
ment for his opponents). On the eco-
nomic level, he saw only the advan-
tages of remittances from emigrants,
which considerably improved his bal-
ance of payments. On the other hand,
emigration provided bad publicity for
the regime, and in the long term favored
the formation of opposition cells abroad
which maintained contact with others
at home.
The Haitian "boat people" affair
accentuated the contradictions of the
regime and exposed the weakness of
Duvalier (1979-1981). The North Ameri-
cans were concerned that Florida was
being invaded by refugees in unseawor-
thy vessels fleeing the shores of a
friendly country. It had hitherto been
accepted that people risking their lives
in this way could only be escaping from
a communist country (Cuba or Viet-
nam). For a time, a number of detention
camps for illegal Haitian immigrants
were opened on the US mainland and
in Puerto Rico (the only one in exis-
tence today is the Krome camp in the
suburbs of Miami).
An agreement was signed with the
United States authorizing American
coastguard vessels to patrol in Haitian
waters to spot shiploads of potential
refugees, and it became very difficult
to avoid being detected in the Wind-
ward Passage. For its part Haiti stepped
up controls on exiles by setting a
prohibitive tax on passports, increasing
restrictions for obtaining the "return
visa" necessary to get back into the
country, and above all by removing
citizenship from Haitian nationals who
had'obtained foreign citizenship. The
principle of making dual nationality

impossible was applied rigorously. Many
Haitians had acquired foreign citizen-
ship for a variety of reasons: to get
particular jobs, to benefit from certain
facilities, to feel secure, or because they
were born or married in foreign coun-
tries. By this method, the regime tried
to prevent the return of tens of thousands
of opponents.
Over a period of years, the regime
had squandered any credit it had been
able to gain from its "liberal" policy,
its appeals to foreign investors, opening
its doors to international tourism, and
by setting up subcontract industries.
The true nature of the regime was
exposed by exiles who campaigned
actively, especially in Canada and the
United States, on the subject of immi-
gration and the boat people. Reports
described the terrible misery in which
the mass of the Haitian people were
sunk. Added to this were fears regard-
ing the unsanitary conditions in the
country and the spread of a new unmen-
tionable disease (AIDS). Haiti became
the "black spot" of the Caribbean, a
repulsive location from all points of
view, and Haitians were considered
undesirable because they brought with
them misery, magic and disease. There
inevitably arose sensationalist exaggera-
tions that painted the picture worse than
it was. Fifty years after the end of the
American occupation, Haiti again be-
came a headache for the State Depart-
ment, and there was no solution in
sight

Will They Come Home Again?

Duvalier's departure left behind diffi-
cult problems which will require long-
term consideration, and social and spa-
tial inequalities which will need radical
rethinking. But there was undeniably a
positive point, at least for awhile: less
fear. After February 1986 there were
outbursts in the streets and complaining
voices unthinkable under the dicta-
torship. There was concern that the
provisional regime of the National Gov-
erning Council would continue the infa-
mous "return visa," but exiles of all
colors returned to the country to put
forward their programs or simply to
smell the smells of their native soil after
so many years abroad. Renewed con-
tact, properly nurtured, between the
diaspora and those who stayed on the
island should lead to productive inter-
change and provide benefit from the
varied experiences in the emigrant coun-
tries. In the past, financial barriers (the
cost of buying or renewing a passport
which made the Haitian passport one
of the most expensive in the world) and
the fear of being harassed had played a
significant part in limiting the return
of emigrants. Haitians from New York,
Miami and Santo Domingo hesitated
to take a plane to Port-au-Prince for
their holidays, or to consider retiring
to their country, or to plan a return for
any other reason.
It is, however, impossible to be too

J

Photo by Phillippe Diederich

In Boston

CARIBBEAN REVIEW/37

optimistic about an eventual large-scale
return of skilled exiles or holders of
capital. Haiti's economic stagnation and
the great disparity in its standard of
living compared with other countries
(even for manual and white-collar work-
ers) make unlikely a rapid return of
members of the diaspora, who would
find themselves faced with the restric-
tions of an underdeveloped infrastruc-
ture and mentality. A parallel example
is the evolution of remittances, which
have recently dropped as a result of
emigrants' stabilization. With the re-
grouping of families, it becomes less
important to send money back to the
country as people become "installed"
in their host country, buying property
and educating their children. There will,
in all likelihood, continue to be a far
greater number of Haitian doctors, teach-
ers, university students and skilled work-
ers living abroad than in Haiti itself.
This means that the intellectual and
technical support provided by those
migrants who do have the courage to
return to Haiti is of vital importance to
any future economic revival in the
country.
The highest priority for any decent
Haitian government in the future will
be to support economic recovery. To

this end, the arrival of new capital will
be vital; it will also be necessary to find
a way of repatriating Haitian capital
deposited abroad. Much has been writ-
ten about the movement of people, but
less has been said about the emigration
of capital, to say nothing of the hun-
dreds of millions of dollars stolen and
dissipated in luxury purchases by the
ex-dictator and his followers. One has
only to remember the deposits made
by industrialists and businessmen in
US bank accounts in the last ten years
or so, representing a net export almost
equal to the country's total national
debt (approximately one billion dol-
lars).
A final task will be to restore the
image of the country abroad, benefitting
Haitians both at home and overseas.
The pariah label attached to holders of
Haitian passports should disappear from
the Caribbean, as well as the United
States, where the Haitian has all too
often been seen as a worker to be
mercilessly exploited, a man or woman
who depresses wages, in a word a
"scab." It will be necessary to eradi-
cate the often racist stigma of discrimi-
nation that has operated over the years.
For this to happen, an independent and
bold diplomacy will be needed. There

can be no hiding the fact that Haiti is
a poor country which cannot achieve
prosperity without considerable long-
term efforts, but the dignity of the
country must be restored. Any future
well-meaning government can no longer
remain indifferent to the plight of the
braceros and the hundreds of thousands
of Haitians living in the Dominican
Republic. Regularization of the position
of illegal immigrants can be negotiated
with the US, Venezuela, France and
other countries. The Krome detention
camp in Florida should be closed.
When examining Haitian migration,
roe cannot overlook the general prob-
lem of Caribbean migration, where the
economic structures of underdeveloped
and dominated countries act to "expel"
their surplus labor force. This applies
to all the countries from Cuba to
Trinidad, including Puerto Rico and
Guadeloupe. But the particularly ar-
chaic character of Haitian social forma-
tion and the total absence of respect for
human rights has aggravated the situ-
ation. Poverty and discrepancies in the
standard of living compared with neigh-
boring countries and the industrialized
powers inevitably set the unskilled and
those lacking resources on the path of
final exile. 0

38/CARIBBEAN REVIEW

Puerto Rican Houses in
Sociohistorical Perspective
Carol F. Jopling
"This book extends the scope of American vernacular
architecture research into the Caribbean. It presents such a
thorough and thoughtful survey of domestic building that
the way is now opened to others to pursue questions of a
comparative and interpretive nature. The unexpected
variety of the island's houses is sure to be an eye-opener
even to well-traveled fieldworkers."
-John Michael Vlach, George Washington University.
320 pages, 213 illustrations, $34.95

been no shift to the center. The Jamai-
can left, both within and outside the
PNP (primarily the WPJ) is weaker now
than in the late 70s. At that point the
left shared: (1) in broad terms, a com-
mon analysis of Jamaican society and
the world system a neo-Marxist class
analysis and dependency approach; (2)
common intellectual and political roots
in the New World group and its succes-
sors in Caribbean dependency theory
and in the black power movement of
the late 60s; and (3) a common anti-
IMF position. There were many disagree-
ments among various factions on the
left, but these groups perceived them-
selves to be on the same side of a
common struggle.
This situation had radically changed
by 1987. The left had become frag-
mented, disoriented, and on the defen-
sive. The WPJ emerged much weaker,
more politically isolated, and unsure of
its own political direction. To be sure,
in terms of popular support this greater
weakness is more apparent than real,
since the party's mass base was never
that great. The perception of greater
strength was derived from the party's
intellectual influence and its influence
in the newsroom at the Jamaica Broad-
casting Corporation during the late 70s.
But whatever mass support it enjoyed
in the late 70s and early 80s had
obviously disappeared by the 1986 Par-
ish Council elections, in which it was
decimated. The fallout on Grenada,
particularly the public perception that
the party was pro-Coard, was one factor
behind the WPJ's decline. The Grenada
issue was important not only at the
mass level but also at the elite level,
where the WPJ's apologetic position
on Coard's actions drove a wedge
between it and most of the rest of the
left leadership and activists.
The PNP left has also divided in
several directions. First, the intellectu-
als close to the PNP in the 70s, many
of them based on the Mona campus of
the University of the West Indies, have
argued, without changing their basic
social and political analysis, that the
PNP did make errors due to overestima-
tion of state capacity, excessive rheto-
ric, etc. They also contend that the
party's present, more cautious policy is
all that is possible given the constraints
of the situation. This group is joined

The PNP Gets A Haircut
Illustration by Carlos R. Mestre

by some of the left cadre and activists
presently or formerly inside the party
apparatus.
A second group, including the PNP
Youth Organization and Duncan, cling
to the view that the only errors of the
70s were caused by the moderate lead-
ership in the party. This element is the
least influential now because it has no
intellectual wing to speak of and be-
cause, with the exit of Duncan and
Spaulding from the PNP leadership and
future PNP parliamentary group, it is
cut off from the use of patronage as an
incentive for mass mobilization. It is
in this respect that the leadership changes
have weakened the PNP left. It should
be noted also that the decline of left
influence in the PNP should not be
exaggerated, if only because the left has
never been firmly in charge of party
policy. It often set the tone for the
party's image, but only for a brief
period after the break with the IMF in
1980 did it come close to rivaling the
moderates in terms of controlling im-
portant ministries. What the decline
does mean is that there is less of a
counterweight to the influence of the
right in the party, which in its turn has
been strengthened by the return to the
leadership of people like William Isaacs,
the former Minister of Labor, and the
addition of people like Claude Clark, a
successful businessman. This shift in
the internal power distribution is re-
flected in the total absence of the notion

CARIBBEAN REVIEW/39

of class struggle from any PNP state-
ments in the 80s.
There has been a convergence of
some elements of the left, the centrists
in the party leadership and Manley on
the direction the party ought to take.
Though Manley has taken the lead in
publicly defining the change, he has
done this partly in response to the
criticism of the other two elements. For
instance, P. J. Patterson was the strong-
est critic of the hidden alliance with the
WPJ, and the intellectual left was re-
sponsible for much of the analysis and
criticism of the PNP government's eco-
nomic policy and program implementa-
tion. The key elements of this common
position are (1) an endorsement of the
Manley position on the US, Cuba, the
WPJ, and rhetoric laid out above; and
(2) an agreement that the broad thrust
of the PNP's democratic socialist path
of the 70s was correct but that the state
lacked the resources to manage all it
took on that the economic man-
agement was in some instances poor,
and that distribution was emphasized
at the expense of production.
As to the current situation, it is
agreed that unilateral repudiation of the
debt is impossible and, though multilat-
eral action by Third World countries
should be pursued, it cannot be relied
upon to bring any immediate results.
Thus the PNP can expect to reduce its
debt payments only by a combination
of negotiation with its creditors and
foot-dragging. It must also count on
having to deal with the IMF, which
tremendously constrains what the gov-
ernment will be able to do. The govern-
ment's policy will have to emphasize
expanding production. Only with ex-
panded output can social services be
increased in a substantial way.

The PNP Program

With the publication of its program-
matic statement, Strategy for Develop-
ment (Daily Gleaner Supplement, 25
October 1985), the PNP officially ar-
ticulated its analysis of Jamaica's prob-
lems and the approach a future PNP
government would take to deal with
them. The program's central emphasis
is the need to greatly expand produc-
tion; this imperative permeates virtually
all other areas. The program identifies
five priorities, outlines a general orien-
tation to governing, discusses other
important domestic and foreign policy

areas, and rejects specific policies as
remedies for economic problems.
The priorities are: (1) stimulation of
production, especially for export; (2)
increased earnings and conservation of
foreign exchange; (3) reduction of un-
employment, particularly among the
youth; (4) establishment of a national
nutritional program to provide mini-
mum levels of nutrition for the entire
population; (5) restoration of education
and health services. Production is to be
stimulated through measures in a vari-
ety of areas: special encouragement for
small and community-based enterprises;
support of agriculture for export and
domestic consumption, particularly for
small farmers and cooperative activi-
ties; stepped-up bauxite production linked
to identification of new markets, par-
ticularly in Eastern Europe; efforts to
revive CARICOM; government/private-
sector joint ventures with domestic and
foreign capital, the ownership mix de-
pending on the sector and national
development objectives.
Management of foreign exchange will
include: setting a fixed exchange rate,
initially for about a year, to be reviewed
periodically; formulating a budget for
careful allocation of foreign exchange;
reintroducing import licensing; promot-
ing exports in the manner discussed
above, and continuing the promotion
of tourism. The PNP suggests that the
problem of youth unemployment can-
not be solved simply by an expansion
of the formal sector, but that Commu-
nity Enterprise Organizations would have
to be at the center of the solution.
The document emphasizes that eco-
nomic restoration has to be linked to
the broader task of social transforma-
tion toward a more equitable, demo-
cratic and cooperative society. To achieve
this, it proposes the creation of struc-
tures for popular participation in plan-
ning and in control over the implemen-
tation of policy. At the national level,
a national advisory council with represen-
tatives from business, unions, farmers,
etc., is to have a major voice in
formulating policy. At the local level,
community councils will function im-
mediately in mobilizing local skills and
resources for the restoration of health
and educational services; in the longer
run they will support economic devel-
opment projects. In the workplace, a
system of participation from the shop
floor up to the board of directors is to
foster mutual trust and respect between
workers and management and thus in-

crease national production. Such par-
ticipation on an ongoing basis is to
foster a collaborative relationship be-
tween the government and various
groups of producers, as well as among
the groups of producers themselves.
The section on foreign policy reaf-
firms the PNP's commitment to non-
alignment and makes it abundantly clear
that foreign policy has to be intimately
linked to the pursuit of economic devel-
opment objectives. The search for ex-
port markets, diversified sources of
finance, and new opportunities for in-
vestment mandate good relations with
the United States and Canada, but also
closer relations with Scandinavia, south-
ern European countries, and with so-
cialist countries, which are to play a
strategic role in trade diversification.
The PNP program explicitly rejects
further devaluation and indiscriminate
deregulation. It argues that devaluation
could have no further significant effect
on increasing exports, and that further
deregulation would only aggravate the
negative features of notoriously imper-
fect markets. Instead, partial and highly
selective regulation of imports is to be
used as a tool for development; it is to
protect vital sectors of national produc-
tion such as agriculture, but deny pro-
tection to high-priced, poor-quality manu-
factured products. Finally, a pricing
commission is to protect consumer in-
terests.
Two crucial issues are only briefly
mentioned and insufficiently specified
in the Strategy document, namely the
future of the relationship with the IMF
and of divested state enterprises. The
document argues that it is misleading
to pose the issue of balance-of-pay-
ments adjustments in terms of polar
opposites: IMF versus non-IMF. Ad-
justment policies are necessary, but
they need to be compatible with, and
subordinated to, an overall development
strategy, not the other way around.
Thus, the PNP recognizes that it will
have to deal with the IMF, and argues
that it will start with a review of the
agreements in place. What the program
does not discuss is the consequences
of a frontal clash between the prescrip-
tions rooted in the IMF's view of the
economic world and the PNP's devel-
opment strategy. As for divested enter-
prises, the PNP reserves the right to
future governmental review of the di-
vestment agreements.
In later statements (letter from P. J.
Patterson, Chairman of the PNP, to

Oliver Clarke, Chairman, Hotel Divest-
ment Unit, 10 June 1987; PNP state-
ments of 29 January 1987 and 11 June
1987), the PNP's stance on the divest-
ment issue was clarified. The party is
not in principle opposed to all divest-
ment if it can be shown that divestment
ensures more efficient operations that
will better serve the public interest,
wide public participation in ownership,
and the release of government funds for
other productive purposes. In the three
major cases debated in Jamaica, the
PNP approved of the divestment of
51% of the shares of the National
Commercial Bank because of the broad
spread of ownership, but questioned the
use of the funds resulting from the sale.
In contrast it opposed divestment of the
cement company and hotels because in
the former case, up to 10% could be
acquired by a single shareholder and
the price was too low; in the latter case,
the lease agreements provided for effi-
cient operation and the main task is to
attract new investment rather than recy-
cle ownership of existing facilities.
In an address to the Jamaica Institute
of Management (12 June 1987), P. J.
Patterson further clarified an area of
central concern to the business commu-
nity that had been at the core of
tensions between business and the PNP
in the 70s. He outlined a future PNP
government's position on increased state
ownership, identifying four sets of con-
ditions for state intervention: (1) sal-
vage operations; (2) investment areas
of public interest where the private
sector is unable or unwilling to become
involved; (3) projects of a magnitude
that the private sector cannot handle
alone; and (4) natural monopolies, which
should be publicly controlled because
of their impact on development. Except
in the case of natural monopolies, these
conditions exclude state takeovers of
existing viable enterprises. He reiterated
the importance of a partnership between
the public and private sectors, both in
the sense of a general working relation-
ship and in the sense of concrete joint
ventures.
This view of conditions for state
involvement is a departure from PNP
practice in the 70s, when, for instance,
the state took over three banks
(Barclay's, Citizens and Montreal) and
transformed them into the National
Commercial Bank, took over the ce-
ment company, and carried on negotia-
tions with other large domestic enter-
prises about state takeover. Interviews

40/CARIBBEAN REVIEW

with various PNP leaders confirmed
this change. The dual constraints of the
extreme shortage of material and human
resources in the public sector and of the
imperative of increasing production have
compelled the party to think principally
about starting new ventures and about
enlisting private-sector collaboration in
areas identified as crucial for national

development. A similarly pragmatic and
somber view predominates with respect
to the debt constraint On the one hand,
the leadership is very clear about the
fact that unilateral repudiation of the
debt is out of the question for Jamaica;
but on the other hand, they feel that
servicing the debt as scheduled is not
possible either. This feeling is aggra-

vated by a concern that the govern-
ment's financial position in the years
to come will be worse than it appears
now, because Seaga has committed
bauxite sales for a considerable future
time period in exchange for advance
payments, the extent of which has not
been made public. Thus the PNP will
give serious consideration to the idea

Although the subject of the
Stephens' research is one of
the smallest countries in the
Western Hemisphere, their book's sig-
nificance transcends Jamaican politics.
By examining the rise and fall of
Michael Manley's People's National
Party (PNP) government between 1972
and 1980, the authors raise the more
important issue of the efficacy and
viability of democratic socialism in a
developing nation. The Stephens are
proponents of democratic socialism, but
that fact does not stand in the way of
a well-crafted empirical study of the
strengths and weaknesses of the two
Manley administrations.
Analysis of Jamaica usually lakes
place within the framework of depend-
ency theory. Although dependistas fre-
quenty attribute to that theory far
greater explanatory power than it de-
serves, Jamaica's classical plantation
economy probably offered as pure a
form of dependent capitalism as one
could hope to find. The authors, how-
ever, correctly point out that all of the
problems faced by the Manley govern-
ments cannot be explained by exogenous
factors. They accept external constraints
on development as a given.
Manley receives high marks for deep-
ening formal democracy by lowering
the voting age to eighteen, redrawing
electoral districts so that the parliamen-
tary outcome in seats more closely
reflected the vote, and introducing other
electoral reforms which made the 1980
election the fairest in Jamaica's history.
The authors argue that the PNP's mass
mobilization of lower income groups
made democracy more inclusionary. Im-
portant strides were made in equity
including extended rent control, new

public housing, expanded educational
opportunities, and a dramatic drop in
infant mortality from 30.9 deaths per
1,000 live births to 12.4. The Stephens
give the PNP high marks for asserting
state control over the bauxite industry
and for trying to reduce food depend-
ency. Yet they concede that the record
in agricultural reform was mixed, and
that the high degree of foreign indebt-
edness incurred by the government cre-
ated a new form of dependency.
Clearly the Achilles' heel of the
Manley government was economic
growth. The deteriorating economy was
a primary factor contributing to the
intensity of capitalist opposition to the
PNP government. Moreover, rising un-
employment from mid-1976 onward
and the JMF austerity packages eroded
much, if not all, of the gains made by
the lower classes through earlier redis-
tributional programs. A critical issue,
then, is the relationship between the
socialist program and the economic
crisis of the late 1970s.
Four elements contributed to the eco-
nomic collapse. 1) Exogenous factors,
specifically the 1973 and 1978 oil shocks,
deteriorating terms of trade and world-
wide inflation, took their toll on many
Latin American economies (except pe-
troleum exporters) regardless of regime
type. 2) The fierce opposition of the
capitalist and professional classes to the
PNP government. The ability of the
bourgeois opposition to sabotage a so-
cialist project through disinvestment,
media attacks, exit of skilled personnel
and bureaucratic malfeasance are docu-
mented. 3) US opposition through re-
duced aid, disinformation designed to
reduce investment and tourism and,
possibly, funding of the opposition.
With admirable intellectual honesty, the
Stephens careful investigated allega-
tions of CIA-directed covert operations
in Jamaica under the Ford administra-
tion and concluded that, contrary to
what they had published earlier, there
was probably no such intervention. 4)
Poor middle and long-term economic

planning, bureaucratic ineptitude, and
the continuation of patronage politics.
Coupled with this were the budgetary
pressures faced by a government trying
to expand social programs for its popu-
lar constituency.
One of the book's major arguments
is that the nonexogenous factors could
have been avoided, or mitigated, and
do not doom a democratic socialist
regime to economic failure. Although
the Stephens believe it was the PNP's
economic programs, and not its rheto-
ric, that initially alienated the bourgeoi-
sie, they note that "social and political
mobilization, the increase in rhetoric...
the Cuba relationship.., generated a
tremendous amount of fear in the Ja-
maican upper class which cannot be
accounted for by policies alone." They
fault the r-gime for excessively "effu-
sive praise of Cuba" which only aroused
capitalist and middle-class paranoia. Simi-
larly, the "one-sided focus [of the
PNP's left wing] on the class forces
within the party as a barrier to change"
and the left's desire to purge bourgeois
influences also prevented an alliance
with the "patriotic bourgeoisie" that
would have reduced disinvestment. At
the same time, the PNP's pro-Cuban
stance unnecessarily alienated the United
States during an interlude of compara-
tively progressive US foreign policy.
Although not all the arguments in
Democratic Socialism are convincing,
it is certainly not necessary that the
reader agree with all of them, or with
the authors' ideological perspective.
What makes this book so impressive is
the way in which the authors exten-
sively explore the ramifications of their
own position and that of various wings
of the PNP. They never fail to antici-
pate objections to their own arguments,
to respond to them intelligently and to
admit, when appropriate, the limitations
of their case. This is not a book for
those who seek easy answers or ideo-
logical rigidity.
Howard Handelman
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

CARIBBEAN REVIEW/41

of tying future debt service to foreign
exchange earnings, as Peru has done.

Preparing to Govern

The degree of preparedness for exercis-
ing governmental power that has been
achieved by the PNP, both at the
leadership and the activists' levels, is
very high compared to any previous
government and party, including the
PNP in 1972. Since the defeat in 1980,
party members have engaged in serious
retrospective analysis and discussion
of their experience in office. Most of
the members of the PNP Shadow Cabi-
net have been spokespersons for their
particular areas for a considerable time
and have thus acquired or refreshed
their expertise, a few notable exceptions
notwithstanding. The Shadow Cabinet
meets every two weeks to conduct
routine business and once a month to
think through major policy issues. Nine
cabinet members have prior ministerial
experience. The party leadership has
met with candidates for Parliament to
educate them about the role of MPs, as
well as about general economic and
political issues facing the country and
the PNP. Party groups, the basis of its
organizational structure, are in place in
all the constituencies and ready to carry
on an election campaign.
One of the party's weaknesses in the
70s had been the lack of a serious
program to educate MPs, middle-level
cadre, and rank-and-file activists about
the concrete shape and meaning of the
democratic socialist development model
and about the strategic requirements of
its path. Since 1981, such a program
has been in place and considerable
progress has been made, albeit short of
what insiders who support the program
consider desirable. The program has
reached a large proportion of the middle-
level cadre and prepared them to ex-
plain party policies to the members of
party groups. Among MP candidates,
however, participation in the program
still leaves much to be desired. At least
in part this results from the lack of
unanimously strong support for the
program among the top leadership. Some
leaders on the right (many of whom had
left party activity in the late 70s)
identify political education with leftist
political sloganeering and as a result
simply do not take the program seri-
ously. Even among centrists who osten-
sibly support the program (possibly

because Manley himself does), it is not
always clear how far the support goes.
At the level of the mass electorate,
the party faces the problem that despite
its efforts to refrain from making cam-
paign promises that will generate high
expectations for material improvements,
such expectations are there, partly be-
cause, in the minds of many voters, the
PNP remains associated with the "peo-
ple's programs" of the 70s, and partly
because of its image and practice of
defending the "small man." Attempts
by the PNP leadership to explain the
depth of the problems that will have to
be faced, the absence of magic solu-
tions, and the necessity of future hard
work have been hampered by inade-
quate press coverage of PNP People's
Forums and other PNP events, and by
the PNP's lack of a regular party
publication.
Though the hardship of the Seaga
years has made the mass electorate
more receptive to an election campaign
devoid of the optimistic themes and
promises that characterized campaigns
up to 1980, the question remains how
readily the population will respond to
appeals for hard work to increase pro-
duction and restore social services in
collaboration with a new government.
This raises the issue of the PNP's
capacity for and commitment to popular
mobilization, not just for and during
an election campaign, but for produc-
tive and cooperative efforts on an ongo-
ing basis. Mobilization, like the politi-
cal education program, is still regarded
with suspicion by elements of the top
leadership, and one could easily imag-
ine a situation in which they would
forcefully argue that scarce resources
should be allocated to more directly
productive activities. On the other hand,
the importance of mobilizing communi-
ties to participate in the rehabilitation
of schools and medical facilities may
well sensitize these leaders to the poten-
tial benefits of consistent mobilization
efforts.
Finally, the PNP has devoted enor-
mous energy to the relationships with
the private sector and with US policy
makers in preparing for a future term
in office. The leadership as a whole,
and particularly Manley and Patterson,
have carried on a constant dialogue
with all business sectors in Jamaica.
Judging from our interviews of busi-
nessmen in June and July of 1987, as
well as from public statements of busi-
ness leaders, these efforts can be con-

sidered quite successful. Not that the
business community is going to vote
for the PNP; they clearly prefer a JLP
government, among other reasons be-
cause the PNP is much more demo-
cratic and thus unpredictable than the
JLP. However, they do not see a prob-
able PNP election victory as a funda-
mental threat, and they do not anticipate
a confrontation with a PNP government.
Accordingly, they are not preparing to
take their money out. On the contrary,
they express confidence in their own
role and the dependence of any future
government on their cooperation; many
are actively going forward with signifi-
cant new investment plans. The PNP
would have to do something that they
perceive as inimical to their interests
for them to begin to hold back on
investment.
Efforts to establish good relations
with US policy-making circles have
included contacts not only with the
embassy in Kingston and the State
Department, but also with members of
Congress and both political parties.
Their success is difficult to gauge. One
can assume a strong residual distrust,
at least among people who dealt with
Jamaica in the 70s; but given the
relatively short institutional memories
and high personnel turnover in the State
Department, for instance, there also
seems to be room for new beginnings.
Furthermore, the PNP will be helped
by the fact that Seaga's reluctance to
follow IMF prescriptions for further
devaluation and faster deregulation and
divestment, and his failure to make
Jamaica into the showcase for capitalist
development that the Reagan admini-
stration so generously financed, alien-
ated many of his strong US supporters.
Needless to say, much depends on who
Reagan's successor will be.
The one area in which the PNP as a
party has remained very weak is its
financial base. Party finances are unani-
mously described as dismal. For in-
stance, the party has at present only two
full-time paid organizers. Dues pay-
ments are simply insufficient to guaran-
tee even a minimal operating budget,
not to mention the major expenses to
run a campaign against the well-
financed JLP. Thus the PNP is still
dependent on support from the business
community and well-off members of
the upper middle class. Despite contri-
butions from traditional pro-PNP capi-
talists and a few new business support-
ers, funding possibilities from these

42/CARIBBEAN REVIEW

sources remain exceedingly limited, as
the large majority of the business com-
munity still strongly supports the JLP.
Thus, it comes as no surprise that
provision for public financial support
for political parties is high on the PNP's
legislative agenda.

PNP Options

Obviously the PNP has reviewed its
options and is preparing to govern
within certain economic and political
constraints. But is the party's view
realistic? Let us assume, for the sake
of argument, that the PNP is still
committed to a democratic socialist
path of development. That path in-
volved (1) the reduction of economic
dependence, (2) establishment and op-
eration of a mixed economy in which
the state sector played the leading role,
(3) increasing social and economic equal-
ity, (4) deepening political democracy,
and (5) forging an independent and
nonaligned foreign policy. With these
goals in the background, let us examine
the objective constraints on such a
program in Jamaica's current economic
and political situation.
First, the geopolitical constraint of
being a small nation in the United
States' backyard means that excessively
close relations with Cuba and hostile
ones with the United States are prohibi-
tively expensive. There is probably no
scenario in which a country like Ja-
maica would not suffer economically
from such a posture. The PNP learned
this lesson in the 70s. But contrary to
journalistic emphasis on the PNP's
change in this area, its new posture
does not give up a commitment to
nonalignment and diversification of for-
eign trade.
The constraints of the world econ-
omy, on the other hand, are of overrid-
ing importance and virtually leave the
PNP with no latitude for action in
several key areas. The magnitude of the
debt alone, consuming as it does one-
half of export earnings, severely con-
strains the PNP's options because it so
limits the resources with which the
government will be able to work. More-
over the debt carries with it IMF
conditionality, and this means that a
new Manley government's initiatives
in the areas of increasing social and
economic equality through state action,
or promoting economic development
through state-sector entrepreneurship will

have to be very limited. Nationaliza-
tions of existing enterprises, such as
those carried out by the last PNP
government, would be virtually out of
the question. One might naively think
that default could be an option given
that Jamaica is now spending more for
debt repayment than it is receiving in
the form of new loans. But such a
calculation overlooks the disruption of
trade that would occur through the
suspension of suppliers' credits. More-
over, a confrontation with the IMF and
international banks, and thus almost
certainly with the United States, would
have additional fallout in the Jamaican
case in the form of negative effects on
tourism and exploitation of the issue
by the opposition, which might carry
with it a return of the violence of 1980,
a prospect no one in Jamaica desires.
Aside from the debt there are interna-
tional economic factors other than those
associated with structural economic de-
pendence, which further limit the PNP's
latitude for action. The most important
of these is persistent overcapacity in the
world aluminum market despite the
recent slight improvement. The buyers'
market in bauxite and alumina has
already led a number of Third World
countries to cut taxes, royalties and
levies to retain customers. Thus, even
though the previous PNP initiative gave
the Jamaican state the capacity to inde-
pendently direct its bauxite mining and
alumina production facilities and to
market its output, the international eco-
nomic situation severely limits its abil-
ity to exploit this capacity.
Since late 1977, the domestic power
balance in Jamaica has shifted against
the lower classes and thus against possi-
bilities for social transformation, the
recent decline in the JLP's popularity
notwithstanding. The PNP's mobiliza-
tion capacity has been and will be
reduced by its inability to deliver social
benefits as it did in the 70s and, since
1980, by the absence of a party cadre
in state employment and elective office
which could be depended upon to do
party work as part of their duties. The
party now depends on Manley's cha-
risma, unpaid work by committed activ-
ists, and activity motivated by the
promise of elective or appointive office.
Seaga's tough posture toward the un-
ions has weakened that agent of popular
pressure. On the other side, the domes-
tic capitalist class is now better organ-
ized and more politically confident and
aggressive than it was in the 70s.

Businessmen feel they are indispensa-
ble to any government, and their self-
confidence is further bolstered by inter-
national support for development led
by the private sector, especially from
the IMF.
All this is not to say that the dramati-
cally increased political consciousness
of the Jamaican masses that occurred
during the previous Manley government
has been wiped out. On the contrary, a
poll by Carl Stone showed that 62% of
Jamaicans are opposed to the sale of
government-owned hotels to private in-
terests and, moreover, that opinions on
this issue were highly related to party,
with 86% of PNP supporters opposed
compared to 36% of JLP supporters.
There is a continuity in the mass
public's consciousness between the mid-
70s and now. The balance of organiza-
tional power, however, has changed.
Finally, state managerial capacity rep-
resents another constraint on the PNP's
options. Given that the PNP will not
be able to launch ambitious new pro-
grams on the scale it did in the seven-
ties, this might not seem to be a big
problem. But it hinders the government
from effectively pursuing a policy that
would otherwise be desirable and possi-
ble in the present situation, namely the
imposition of extensive import controls.
The only way to limit imports, and
thereby close the trade gap and save
badly needed foreign exchange, other
than devaluing the currency is to ad-
ministratively restrict imports through
quotas, total bans or taxes (duties,
tariffs, etc.). Such policies have been
seriously undermined by corruption
among public servants and businessmen
during both PNP and JLP governments.
This problem extends beyond the man-
aging of scarce foreign exchange; it
also undermines domestic manufactur-
ing. For instance, the Jamaica Manufac-
turers Association claims that some
40% of all goods come into the country
duty free and argues that under these
conditions domestic businesses, which
must pay high duties on capital goods,
cannot compete. The PNP is aware of
this and has designed its policy to
minimize corruption. Thus, it might
well be possible for them to effectively
implement modest import controls.
The change in the domestic balance
of power and the limited capacity of the
Jamaican state will thus further con-
strain the PNP from departing too far
from the free market, liberal trade,
minimal state intervention policies im-

CARIBBEAN REVIEW43

posed by the IMF. Given the objective
constraints of the international and do-
mestic situation, the only significant
departures from JLP policy that could
be introduced are all in the international
arena: restoration of the nonaligned
posture of the 70s, greater efforts at
trade diversification, promotion of South-
South economic cooperation and, most
important, pressure for a multilateral
solution to the debt problem in coopera-
tion with other Third World countries.
In terms of the PNP program for
domestic economic and social policy,
it should be possible to stimulate pro-
duction by offering support for small
farmers and businesses and for Commu-
nity Enterprise Organizations. This is
largely a matter of allocating resources
differently. Under Seaga, considerable
state resources have been put into large-
scale ventures, for instance in export
agriculture, several of which have in-
curred large financial losses. Also, state
encouragement of community mobiliza-
tion for the rehabilitation of educational
and health services may possibly pro-
duce the desired results. It is likely that
even these measures will encounter
IMF opposition, and it is certain that
the IMF will strongly oppose the pro-
posed reintroduction of import controls,
revival of CARICOM and the concomi-
tant reimposition of external tariffs, and
the stop to further devaluations. While
some concessions are possible, it is
highly improbable that the IMF will
give in on all of these points. This
means that the effects of economic
policy departures will hardly be more
than marginal. The most significant

element of domestic policy proposals
likely to be implemented is the creation
of structures for popular participation
at all levels. This initiative places a
small burden on government funds, and
it could be a significant step toward
deepening the democratic nature of
Jamaican society.

Future Difficulties

The main problem facing the PNP in
the future will be to maintain the
party's stance of mobilization and trans-
formation while having to stay on such
a middle-of-the-road course. The PNP
right opposes efforts at popular mobili-
zation; their basic orientation is toward
administering the status quo more hu-
manely than the JLP. The PNP center,
or moderates, despite essentially being
committed to transformation, lack a
class-analysis view of society and thus
regard domestic power relations as a
given. They fail to recognize the poten-
tial of mobilization, i.e. of movement-
building through grass-roots organizing
and education efforts, as a tool for
changing the balance. The precarious
financial situation of the PNP and its
dependence on the business community
and well-off members of the upper
middle class tend to reinforce the posi-
tion of the moderates, in that these
contributors often genuinely fear that
the party will lose control over the
masses; accordingly funds are likely to
dry up at the first signs of uncontrolled
mobilization. Furthermore, there is a
danger that the moderates may lose
sight of the fact that the PNP's ex-
tremely limited program is a compro-
mise dictated by present constraints,
and that they may begin to identify this
program as the party's basic raison
d'etre and abandon the search for alter-
natives more in line with a democratic
socialist commitment
On the other hand, there is danger
that the timidity and possibly minimal
effect of the program over a few years,
coupled with the resistance to mobiliza-
tion on the part of the right and
moderates, will cause alienation among
the PNP left. For its part, the left may
lose sight of the constraints underlying
the program's limitations and may start
blaming them on the right and the
moderates in the party. Widespread
popular disappointment stimulated by
the program's limitations and the lack
of any significant material improve-

ments could lead to receptivity among
the population to appeals from the left
inside and outside the PNP, enabling
the left to construct a new social base.
Whereas this would hardly enable the
left to make a credible bid for leader-
ship of the PNP, it could constitute a
potential for significant disruption
through demonstrations, land invasions,
radical rhetoric, and the like, which
would endanger the accommodation be-
tween the PNP and the business com-
munity, the middle class, and the United
States.
Despite possible future disruptions
from the left, the main danger for the
PNP as a democratic socialist party is
a decisive shift to the right. Manley,
who still commands widespread strong
loyalty and influence, is the main factor
preventing an abandonment of the com-
mitment to social transformation. He
had managed to balance the factions in
the 70s, though his ability to push the
entire party toward a more socialist
ideological stance had been in part due
to the existence of a strong left inside
and outside the party. Today the left is
much weaker. Essentially then, the PNP
now faces the opposite problem from
the one it faced in the 70s. Then the
main problem was how to come to an
accommodation with the business com-
munity, the middle classes, and the US
while proceeding rapidly on the path
of transformation and promoting a high
level of popular mobilization. Today
the main problem is not to lose the
commitment to transformation and the
capacity for mobilization, while pursu-
ing accommodation with the antagonists
of the 70s. E

44/CARIBBEAN REVIEW

Michael Manley (Photo: J. B. Diederich)

Prime Minister Edward Seaga

Negotiating with Nicaragua
Continued from page 23

the change, Pallais was called by So-
moza into a Cabinet meeting discussion
of the plebiscite. During the discussion,
Somoza did not say a word. The debate
went against the MT's proposal, and the
Cabinet voted "no." Pallais was
shocked. "All Somoza had to do was
say, 'yes,' and the vote would have
changed." Pallais later discovered that
a number of people in the Cabinet, led
by Foreign Minister Julio Quintana,
"had persuaded Somoza that he would
lose a free election, and he wanted to
stay in power." This was the decisive
moment.
The Cabinet and the Liberal Party
negotiators, however, decided that it
would be better to quibble over the
proposal's constitutionality than to re-
ject it. Washington, unaware of either
Somoza's uncertainty or his final deci-
sion, was losing its patience. General
Dennis McAuliffe, Commander of the
US Southern Command in Panama,
accompanied Bowdler on December 21.
"The reason that I'm here," McAuliffe
said on behalf of the Pentagon, "is that
we perceive that the cooperation you
have given to the negotiating team is
no longer evident." McAuliffe contin-

ued: "We on the military side of the
US recognize...that peace will not come
to Nicaragua until you have removed
yourself from the presidency and the
scene."
Somoza claimed his only objection
was that the United States was demand-
ing he permit an election "which would
not be acceptable anywhere in the
world." "If the plebiscite is organized
along traditional lines, which the people
of Nicaragua understand," Somoza said,
"there will be no problem." Of course,
that was the problem. The Somozas had
never permitted a fair election, and he
knew that better than anyone.
Somoza was left with no doubt about
the intentions and objectives of the US
government, and acknowledged as much:
"What he [General McAuliffe] has
actually outlined to me is that if I turn
right, I hit the wall; if I go forward, I
hit the wall; if I turn left, I hit the
wall."

Negotiations continuedfor another
month, and then the United States
implemented the sanctions against
Somoza that it had threatened. To
little effect. One of the many ques-
tions that remain from that period
was whether the United States would
have been able to negotiate either
Somoza's acceptance of a genuine

plebiscite or his exit. If the U.S. had
focused on Somoza's specific needs
- as described in his three ques-
tions and used more pressure and
a more astute bargaining strategy,
would that have worked? The an-
swer is not known, but it appears
there was a moment when Somoza
was serious and a deal possible.
In the relationship between the
US and the Sandinista government,
there also have been moments when
each side was serious and other
moments when each was cynical.
Since August 7, 1987, the date that
the five Central American Presi-
dents signed the Guatemalan Ac-
cord, the Sandinistas, like Somoza
before them, moved reluctantly to
accept their adversaries as legiti-
mate, and to negotiate their con-
cerns. There were signs that they
were serious, and other signs that
they seemed to be playing for time.
The worst approach to dictators
or unfriendly governments is to
assume that they are never serious
and reject negotiations. The best
approach is one that combines pres-
sure with a clear understanding of
the personality, needs, and objec-
tives of the other side. The United
States has not yet learned that
lesson. 0

reaction which betrayed an amazing
ignorance of the fact that Panama lacked
aircraft capable of carrying out such an
operation.
When the mediation collapsed at the
start of 1979, administration interest
quickly turned to other areas. Pastor
believes that Nicaragua's democratic
opposition was actually relieved that
the effort failed, but he later notes their
anger at what they felt was their aban-
donment by the Carter administration
in the crucial early months of 1979.
The lack of any serious fallback posi-
tion once the mediation collapsed, the
persistent, false belief that time was
somehow on the side of the US, and
the growing distress of US allies as
well as Nicaragua's internal opposition
over the lack of direction from Wash-
ington all contributed to a rapid decline
in the administration's ability to influ-
ence events and, consequently, a steady
growth in the perception that the Sandin-
istas offered the only real alternative to
Somoza. By June, when Sandinista
military success forced the administra-
tion to again focus on Nicaragua, its
ability to influence events had declined
precipitously.
From early June 1979, until the
Sandinistas entered Managua on July
19, the Carter administration tried fran-
ticly to find a formula which would
remove Somoza, but not leave total
power in Sandinista hands. Condemned
to Repetition documents the ways in
which internal disputes, inadequate in-
formation, and a chronic inability to
coordinate policies with potential allies,
combined with the loss of US credibil-
ity since the failure of the mediation to
frustrate US efforts to shape Nicara-
gua's post-Somoza government. The
result was that US policy contributed
to the result it was supposed to prevent,
the accession to power in Nicaragua of
the Marxist-influenced Sandinista Na-
tional Liberation Front (FSLN).
Once the Sandinistas took power, the
Carter administration attempted, with
some skill, to make the best of a bad
situation. Many may not fully agree
with Pastor's assertions that "the United
States government deliberately suspended
its suspicions about the Sandinistas,"
and adopted a policy of "open and
ample support for the revolution," but
it is clear that a real effort was made

to coexist and to demonstrate that Nica-
ragua's new leaders had options other
than aligning themselves with the Cu-
bans and the Soviets. Administration
objectives of promoting "political plu-
ralism, elections and a vigorous private
sector," while pressing for "Nicara-
guan noninterference in the internal
affairs of its neighbors" were reason-
able, but difficult to implement. Even
more difficult was the effort to "deny
the Sandinistas an enemy and thus a
reason for relying on Cuban and Soviet
military assistance." This project was
repeatedly handicapped by high levels
of mutual suspicion, by Republican
desires to make Nicaragua an issue in
the 1979 campaign, and by the reduced
capabilities and credibility of the Carter
administration in its final year and a
half. What Pastor makes clear is that
the failure of administration efforts was
also due to Sandinista intransigence, to
their determination to aid the uprising
in nearby El Salvador, and their own
vision of virtually inevitable conflict
with the United States. For any who
still believe that it was US pressures
that first forced Nicaragua to turn to the
Soviet Union and Cuba for assistance,
or who doubt reports of Sandinista
support for El Salvador's guerrillas, the
evidence in this volume may come as
a rude shock.
There is a sense of constant frustra-
tion, of anger and of despair as Pastor
recounts the events which led to a
growing rift between the two nations.
While the victory of Ronald Reagan in
the 1980 elections clearly accelerated
this trend and further reduced chances
for a compromise, their is little in
Condemned to Repetition which would
encourage the belief that US-Nicara-
guan relations would have been any-
thing but confrontational if Carter had
won a second term. The section on the
Reagan administration and the Sandin-
istas is somewhat less useful, partly
because it lacks the inside perspective
so valuable in earlier chapters. Pastor
sees the suspicions, ideologies and stereo-
typing typical of both the Sandinistas
and the Reagan administration as con-
tributing to growing polarization and
producing self-fulfilling prophecies of
inevitable conflict. In his concluding
section, Pastor attempts to analyze the
reasons why US policy in Nicaragua,
under both the Carter and Reagan ad-
ministrations, failed. He also seeks
broader lessons which can be applied
to US efforts to respond to revolutions

throughout the third world. Few readers
will find this section fully satisfactory,
but it is provocative, thoughtful and
deserving of serious attention. The author
correctly points out the chronic US
"predilection for the middle" demon-
strating how this often hampers policy
options, but offering no real alternative.
He also underlines the problems caused
by confused images and misconstrued
communications. For example, he notes
that "The US government could not
understand why Venezuela, Costa Rica,
Panama and Mexico supported the Sandin-
istas, and these countries could not
understand why the United States, which
said it did not support Somoza, would
not replace him." His treatment of
these problems provides valuable guide-
lines for future policies which go far
beyond the narrow boundaries of Nica-
ragua.
Other assertions are somewhat more
questionable. Pastor believes that the
radicalization of the revolution "was
not inevitable," but adds that "both
governments were insecure and dis-
trusted each other so completely that
they were unable to consider any way
to influence the other except by force."
At this point, and at a few others, the
author's belief that the development of
relations since 1979 has been disastrous
for both nations and that therefore there
must have been a better alternative
comes through quite clearly. But that
better alternative never fully emerges;
there is no compelling evidence to
suggest that, had the United States
acted differently, there would have been
any basic change in the pattern of
events. Pastor may well be right; I
would like to believe he is, but his
arguments in this area leave me uncon-
vinced.
Other conclusions seem more solidly
based. The high price paid for the
government's lack of historical perspec-
tive is amply demonstrated by this
study. So too is Pastor's observation
that, in the period following a revolu-
tion, "opportunities for influencing the
new government to be moderate and
friendly to the United States are negligi-
ble at best. The opportunities of nega-
tively influencing the new government
are legion." One effect of the Nicara-
guan experience for the author has
obviously been to strongly underline
the limits of US power.
The author concludes with sugges-
tions for dealing with such issues in the
future, advising policy makers to work

46/CARIBBAN REVIEW

to isolate dictatorships, seek ways to
facilitate a dictator's leaving power, and
aiding in the transition to democracy
through international organisms, such
as "an international election monitoring
organization."
Like all studies, this one has its
flaws. While rarely apologetic when it
comes to his own role in affairs or to
the actions of his immediate superior,
Zbignew Brzezinski, he remains reluc-
tant to fault President Carter directly,
even when the evidence clearly points
that way. At times he seems to underes-
timate the extent to which the Nicara-
guan democratic opposition, first in the
case of Somoza and later in their

relations with the Sandinistas, focused
their energies on trying to get the
United States to resolve their problems
for them, an effort which left them
fatally weakened in their own political
arena.
The book's merits far outweigh what-
ever faults it may posses. For those
interested in the history of US-Latin
American relations, it provides valuable
new information on policy formulation
and implementation during the Carter
years. For those involved in the formu-
lation and implementation of US policy,
it provides clear evidence of the limita-
tions on these policies, the difficulties
inherent in translating policies into real-

ity, and the recurring nature of basic
dilemmas which appear little affected
by changes in the personalities or ide-
ologies dominant in Washington. The
conclusions should stimulate further de-
bate on the options open to an admini-
stration confronted with a hostile revo-
lution, or trying to oust an unpopular
dictator who persistently attempts to
wrap himself in the American flag.
This book should make us all re-
examine our assumptions about what
is desirable or even possible in such
situations. For this, and much more,
Condemned to Repetition qualifies as
must reading for anyone seriously inter-
ested in US-Latin American relations. m

The Shifting Sands ...
Continued from page 3

power to rule over the military, at least
he should have been accorded the legiti-
macy that his intellectual friends knew
he deserved.
Many intellectuals acted as if the
conversion of authoritarian regimes had
to be some kind of immaculate concep-
tion. Others, who, ironically, looked for
ways to give the Avril government-by-
coup the benefit of the doubt, withheld
support from Manigat.
Manigat knew that the process was
going to take time and fierce manipula-
tion. But too many intellectuals treated
him with outrage rather than insight.
They treated him with the same resent-

ment they treat anyone who tries to
succeed in the real world: with envy,
suspicion and moral self-righteousness,
they damned with faint praise. The
intellectuals knew Leslie Manigat, they
knew Gdrard Latortue. They knew Ma-
nigat and Latortue were not tinhorn
dictators trying to steal a poor country's
meager wealth.
Intellectual disdain for the work of
statecraft only put pressure on Manigat,
contributed to the withholding of US
Congressional support, and bloated the
egos of many who should have been
part of Manigat and Latortue's natural
constituency. One colleague likened Ma-
nigat et al. to collaborateurs. Another
kept announcing that he "was going to
be hard on Leslie." Why was it neces-
sary to posture distance?

When Manigat finally thought he
found the crack in the army that he
wanted, he was left without the pre-
knowledge of what he was doing ex-
plained to the world; he couldn't pull
it off and he lost. One remembers and
laments the confusion expressed by
US secretary of state George Schultz
at the time of Manigat's fall.
The new question at this time then
is how to judge the Avril government
Perhaps now, for many observers, the
answer is simpler. This government can
be considered legitimate only if it sets
up processes to transform itself, only if
it brings about the conversion of gov-
ernment by thuggery to government by
decency, indeed, only if it tries to do
what the Manigat government tried to
do but was unable to do. a

CAIBBCAN

PEEW AWARD

The Caribbean Review Award is given
annually to honor an individual who
has contributed to the advancement
of Caribbean intellectual life. The
winner of the ninth annual award,
presented at the 13th International
Meeting of the Caribbean Studies
Association, Guadeloupe, FWI,
26 May 1988, is Jaime Benitez.
He joins previous recipients Aim6
C4saire, C.L.R. James, Gordon K.
Lewis, W. Arthur Lewis, Sidney W.
Mintz, Arturo Morales Carridn, Philip
M. Sherlock and M.G. Smith.
Born in Vieques in 1908, Jaime
Benitez is one of Puerto Rico's
outstanding educators. He received
his early education in Puerto Rico's

public schools and earned advanced
degrees from Georgetown University
and the University of Chicago.
Devoting himself to higher education,
Dr. Benitez began teaching at the
University of Puerto Rico in 1931.
He was appointed chancellor in 1942
and president of the university
system in 1966. He created a
modern multi-campus university which
today consists of 11 units throughout
the island with over 56,000 students.
Between 1972 and 1976, he served
as resident commissioner, the elected
nonvoting representative of Puerto
Rico in the US Congress. Returning
to the island and academia in 1976,
he joined Interamerican University
and since 1982 has been Distin-
guished Professor of Political
Science. In 1984, UPR appointed
him Emeritus Professor.
Dr. Benftez was cofounder with Sir
Philip Sherlock of the Association of

Caribbean Universities and Research
Institutes (UNICA). He has published
numerous reports, monographs and
articles. His best known books are
Junto a la Torre (1963) and La casa
de studios (1985).
The award committee consisted
of Lambros Comitas (chairman),
Columbia University; Locksley
Edmonson, Cornell University; Angel
Calderdn Cruz, University of Puerto
Rico; Lisandro P6rez, FlU; and
Andr6s Serbin, Universidad Central
de Venezuela.
The Caribbean ReviewAwardrecog-
nizes individual effort irrespective of
field, ideology, national origin or place
of residence. Nominations for the
10th annual Caribbean Review
Award, to be presented at the
14th International Meeting of the
Caribbean Studies Association in
Barbados, May 1989, are due
March 15th.

Upon first glance, this book seems a
welcome addition to the increasingly
important genre within Latin American
theological writing of personal accounts
that explore the intersection of ideas
from liberation theology and attempts
in Christian Base groups to apply these
ideas. Unfortunately it does not live up
to the promise of its name or subject
matter. Ostensibly, Guerrillas of Peace
developed from Bonpane's experiences
while a Maryknoll priest in Guatemala
in the mid-1960s, followed by the
expulsion of the Maryknolls from Gua-
temala in December 1967, and his
subsequent decision to leave the order
to pursue his work on Central America.
What emerged, however, was an overly
schematic polemical testament.
Perhaps most infuriating about this
book is its insistent reduction of com-
plex questions to simplistic aphorisms.
It must be painful for theologians who
struggle with the subtleties of the possi-
ble connections between Marxian analy-
sis and liberation theology to read
Bonpane's flat assertion, with no fur-
ther discussion, of the complete com-
patibility of Marxism and liberation
theology. He treats Marxism with the
breathy revelation of someone who has
just read Marx for the first time without
yet sifting through the complexities.
And even the most committed opponent
of US imperialism might find irritating
statements, again with no further elabo-

Forrest D. Colburn teaches politics at
Princeton University.

ration, like "Everyone of goodwill knows
that Washington's policy is simply the
boot of empire on an innocent people."
One finishes this book with the feeling
that what could have been a powerful
account of one priest's direct experi-
ences and process of consciousness-
raising instead degenerates into a rather
vapid political tract, consisting often of
merely a string of rhetorical slogans.
Michele Heisler
Ford Foundation, N.Y.

Justo Carrillo, one of the student lead-
ers of the Directorio Estudiantil Univer-
sitario of 1933 at the University of
Havana, sheds new light on one of the
most unique and fascinating episodes
of modem Latin American history: the
Cuban Revolution of 1933, a revo-
lutionary process resulting in the first
student-established and controlled na-
tional government in the hemisphere.
The experience of those 132 days, as
well as the events that led to the fall
of the revolutionary government and
the consequences of its failures, not
only left an indelible mark on the
Cuban social and political system, but
its ripple effects have been felt in the
whole continent.
The book, which is well illustrated
with pictures of the period and takes
for granted that the reader already has
a basic grounding on Cuban history,
summarizes the process by wnich a
democratically elected president, Ger-
ardo Machado (1924), craftily manipu-

lates the Congress into major constitu-
tional and electoral-law reforms that
would give him authoritarian control
of the state and insure his perpetuation
in power at least until 1935. These
reforms and the repressive tools in-
creasingly used to enforce them pro-
voked a radicalizing opposition move-
ment. By 1930, a generation of student
leaders was emerging at the University
of Havana through the formation of
uncoordinated cells of resistance. They
joined together in September 1930 to
form the Directorio Estudiantil Univer-
sitario.
Carrillo carefully tracks the process
of intellectual and political maturation
of this group of idealistic, mostly middle-
class university students who, between
1930 and 1933, through heroism, intel-
lectual distinction and moral example,
captured the respect and admiration of
the people. Over this three-year period,
the students shifted their position from
one simply demanding the ouster of the
dictator and basic university reforms to
one which called for a complete break
with the old regime, including reassess-
ment of US-Cuban relations (the unilat-
eral abrogation of the Platt Amendment
and the end to the economic treaty then
in existence), and a new constitution
that would ensure the full participation
of all citizens in the political and
economic life of the country.
When the dictator fell, mostly as the
result of a general strike, the students
refused to accept the new Washington-
mediated government that emerged. With-
out the popular legitimacy that the
students could bring to it, the tottering
regime of Carlos Manuel de Cdspedes
collapsed as a result of a student-
promoted sergeant's revolt The stu-
dents then made their own candidate
president, University of Havana profes-
sor Ram6n Grau San Martin. It is at

48/CARIBBEAN REVIEW

this point that Fulgencio Batista, self-
appointed leader of the sergeants,
emerged. The revolutionary government
fell through the machinations of two
Washington charge d'affairs, a conspir-
acy by the deposed military high com-
mand, the provocative actions of the
communists, and the growing power of
Batista, who was conspiring with old-
line politicos and negotiating with US
representatives. Although lasting only
132 days, the revolutionary government
managed to enact 127 decrees that
affected all aspects of Cuban life to
such a degree that the succeeding gov-
ernment would find it politically impos-
sible to withdraw most of them, particu-
larly in the socioeconomic area. Those
laws were the most comprehensively
progressive in the hemisphere at the
time.
The US decision not to recognize the
revolutionary government, plus the stu-
dents' inexperience and failure to de-
velop organizations to mobilize the
masses and neutralize the old political
elite are two of the main factors Carrillo
stresses as reasons for the government's
collapse. The third factor Carrillo high-
lights presents what is, perhaps, the
most interesting aspect of the book: the
author's courageous decision to pass
judgment on his peers and the man they
selected as their leader. He blames Grau
for dealing the final blow to the revolu-
tionary regime. Grau explained his de-
cision to let Batista go free after he was
sentenced to death for high treason by
the statement, "Don't you see, one
sergeant is as good as the other; they
are all plebeians and low class. At least
this one is now scared and won't dare
to move against us." This cynical
attitude so disillusioned the students
that they decided to dissolve the Direc-
torio; without their coordinated support,
the revolutionary government was
brought down two months later in a
process coordinated by Batista.
Adolfo Leyva
Florida International University

This book primarily examines the set
of economic laws that govern Puerto

Rico from within, but it does not
neglect Puerto Rico's dependent rela-
tionship with the outside world. It
presents an economic model that "deals
with the daily operation of the Puerto
Rico economy as it is currently consti-
tuted and holds that the long-term
political solution [to the status question]
may eventually be reached on the basis
of the present economy." Both the
specialist and the lay reader will find
this book useful, as it provides factual
data and statistics integrated with de-
scriptive analysis. To ease the discom-
fort of the nonspecialist confronted with
the complex vocabulary of economics,
Weisskoff illustrates vital concepts with
sketches and examples.
The book's five sections include the
presentation of an economic model
termed the "colonial industrial proto-
type," an analysis of the Puerto Rican
economy, a discussion of Puerto Rico
as the prototypical developing Carib-
bean nation, an examination of the
island's historical background, and a
look to the future of Puerto Rico's
economy with a suggested program for
the island's development. In short, Fac-
tories and Food Stamps presents a
comprehensive picture of Puerto Rico's
economy, isolated from any political
stance on the status issue. It is invalu-
able not only as an informational and
statistical resource, but as an educa-
tional guide to understanding the econo-
mies of developing Caribbean nations.
Lawrence C. Phipps, IV
Princeton University

Although Jean Rhys left Dominica in
1907 at the age of 17, and returned for
only one brief and disappointing visit
in 1936, the island and its inhabitants
figure strongly in her last novels, Voy-
age in the Dark and Wide Sargasso
Sea. O'Connor shows how this in-
tensely personal writer used her un-
happy experiences as a young, white
(or, most probably, partly white) Creole
child and woman as the basis for her
fiction, and transmuted her unhappiness
into some of the most nostalgic evoca-
tions of "home" in fiction.
O'Connor gives us a detailed and

largely straightforward criticism of the
two novels, together with an account
of Rhys' long life that is enriched by a
study of unpublished manuscripts and
letters in the University of Tulsa and
some personal letters and interviews.
Rhys identifies herself in most ways
with her heroines, but unlike Anna in
Voyage in the Dark, whose life will
obviously be one of sorrow and despair,
Rhys rid herself of much unhappiness
by writing. Wide Sargasso Sea was
written almost half a century after the
journal which formed the basis of Voy-
age in the Dark and is a much more
complex and mulifaceted book; indeed,
O'Connor shows why it is one of the
most remarkable novels to be written
this century. She also discovers the link
among all Rhys fiction: the triangle of
two women and a man, where the
second woman is a mother, stepmother
or wife who becomes the heroine's
enemy. O'Connor ends with an apt, if
somber, analogy that in Rhys' fiction
the woman is no more and no less than
a colony (a British Caribbean colony?)
to be caught and possessed, enclosed
and controlled by the male governor.
Roy Pateman
The University of Sydney

The poet sits alone eyeing reality, al-
ways on its margin, searching for the
center. When the poet sits on the edge
of two different realities, the quest
becomes increasingly difficult. This is
the case for the Hispanic American
poet, who daily moves back and forth
between two cultural and linguistic
worlds. Triple Crown is a unique book
of poetry that brings together the works
of three young Hispanic American po-
ets who are exploring these limits. It
presents three complete texts: "Feeling
the Red on My Way to the Rose," by
Chicano Roberto Duran; "Reaching for
the Mainland," by Puerto Rican Judith
Ortiz Cofer; and "Carolina Cuban,"
by Cuban American Gustavo P6rez
Firmat.
Duran is at his best when exploring
the legitimacy of his race and the
integrity of his cultural identity. He
confronts his reality here in the United

CARIBBEAN REVIEWI49

States with charged metaphors that os-
cillate between indifference and vio-
lence. The images reflect the spirit of a
people who endure with stoic persever-
ance. The jeans, tatoos, beer cans,
fields, backaches, rosaries are all graphic
signs of his "brown" people in protest.
Yet in the language of his poetry, one
senses the end of a fusion process, a
concordance. Underlying all is the feel-
ing of hope that the "red" of anger
will become the "red" of the rose.
Ortiz's text projects a firm grasp of
her dual identity. Her poems journey
between the island and the mainland,
creating strong visual images of both.
Her text is divided into three sections.
In the first, entitled "The Birthplace,"
the images include the grandmother,
women in black, the birth, the fruit
vendor, the earthworm, and the island
itself. In "The Crossing," the poems
explore a transition period of physical,
as well as emotional, change in a new
cold city of concrete. Finally, "The
Habit of Movement" reflects reconcili-
ation with the past and the poet's two
personas: the "other" woman who fol-
lows her singing in Spanish, shaking
her black mane, with the woman in the
tailored skirt. There is a strong identifi-
cation with the family and a coming to
terms, giving a sense that the poet
belongs to both the island and the
mainland.
P6rez Firmat's poetry differs consid-
erably. For him reconciliation is not
possible. There is a sense of frustration
that one is neither here nor there. A
close study of his language points to a
struggle against his condition; for ex-
ample, negative structures like "not
once, not born, not ever, no longer live,
not wanna go," appear over 45 times
in the short text. He cannot decide in
which language to write and conse-
quently writes in three: English, Span-
ish and Spanglish. Furthermore there is
a recurring sensation of asphyxia, incom-
pleteness and angst. The only place that
offers some comfort is his familiar
home in Miami, which becomes a
replacement for the unattainable miss-
ing center. By not being able to return
to Cuba, part of the poet's reality has
been truncated. Pdrez Firmat's poetry,
however, is not a tormented one; accep-
tance comes through wit and ingenuity,
using language as a creative vehicle to
overcome the hardship of exile reality.
As was a constant in Cuba's literary
tradition, P6rez Firmat uses humor to
come to grips with his condition. His

poems are a groping relationship with
language, the only tool he has as a
writer to cross the boundaries.
Although each poet has a distinct
style, all gather strength and a sense of
identity from their Hispanic roots. This
is manifested through the recurrence of
certain images and linguistic codes,
such as the presence or absence of color
depicting the opposition and the figure
of the mother as a source of physical
as well as spiritual birth, nourishment
and strength. The mother is the sym-
bolic womb for their Hispanic world.
These examples place the writers within
a Hispanic artistic tradition; neverthe-
less they write in English, and their
reflections expand the limits of their
ethnicity.
Carolina Hospital
Miami-Dade Community College

An important new series on Mexico's
relations with Central America has ap-
peared at the Centro de Investigaci6n y
Docencia Econ6mica (CIDE), one of
Mexico's leading foreign policy insti-
tutes. Begun in 1985, under the aus-
pices of CIDE's Central American Stud-
ies Program and funded in part by the
Ford Foundation, the project contem-
plates seven studies of Central Ameri-
can nations' relations with Mexico in
the period 1978-1986, and three vol-
umes on the Contadora process, Mex-
ico's general relations with Central Amer-
ica, and an analysis of the region by
an economist. The editors point out in
their preface that contrary to what is
generally affirmed about close affinity
and relationships to Central America,
Mexicans in fact know very little about
their neighbors to the south. This lack
of understanding is due not so much to
physical distance as to Mexican atti-
tudes toward Central America, charac-
terized by the same disinterest that the
US has traditionally shown toward Mex-
ico. Only when the US focuses on
Central America has Mexico considered
the region important.
The volume on Panama, the first in

the series, appeared at a timely moment,
in view of the political crisis wracking
the country. Following the general for-
mat of the series, the first half is
devoted to historical background. Turner
traces the particularly acute forms of
dependency and conflict that have char-
acterized Panama's model of develop-
ment and relation to the US. She then
turns to Mexico-Panamanian relations,
analyzing Mexico's support for the
Panama Canal Treaties, the early me-
diator role assumed by Torrijos toward
the Central American conflict, the emer-
gence of the Contadora Group in 1983,
and the San Jos6 Agreement of 1980
as the nexus of bilateral economic
relations between the two countries.
This volume, and indeed the entire
series, is a welcome addition to foreign
policy research, not only in providing
Central American perspectives on Mexi-
can diplomacy, but also in "demulti-
lateralizing" the region as a unit of
analysis. In discussing Mexico's rela-
tions with Central America, attention
has generally focused on Nicaragua, El
Salvador and Guatemala to the neglect
of Costa Rica, Belize, Honduras and
Panama. Thus Turner's study, while a
little thin on historical background,
nonetheless represents an important first
step to rounding out our knowledge of
Mexico's relations with "nonrevolu-
tionary others" in Central America and
by extension overcoming the traditional
US-Mexico bias that has pervaded the
literature.
Nancy Robinson
Bryn Mawr College

This anthropological treatise of a con-
temporary Caribbean insular society pro-
vides an extremely comprehensive analy-
sis of Bonairean politics. Indeed, such
is the author's concern for detailed
documentation that we are often dis-
tracted from the book's main theme,
which attempts to fit the machine-
regime of Bonaire, its political person-
alities, patronage and social homogene-
ity into generalizable theoretical frame-
works.
It is perhaps unfortunate that the
frame of reference for this excellent

SO/CARIBBEAN REVIEW

examination of a little-studied Nether-
land Antilles island was general politi-
cal models whose pedigree is drawn
from US or European experiences rather
than more similar and probably more
appropriate Caribbean comparisons. Occa-
sional references to ethnic complica-
tions of politics and society in Suri-
name and Trinidad scarcely represent
the sum of Caribbean political experi-
ence. In characterizations of Bonairean
politics and its direct repercussions on
personal relationships, the influences
of small scale and social homogeneity,
the author could have as easily drawn
on references to St. Vincent, Anguilla
or Barbuda as comparative examples.
Dennis Conway
Indiana University, Bloomington

Derek Walcott laid claim to his "Ameri-
can" identity in 1974 when he wrote:
"Being both American and West Indian
is an ambiguity without crisis...because
we share this part of the world...because
we know that America is black, that so
much of its labor, its speech, its music,
its very style of living is generated by
what is now cunningly and carefully
isolated as 'black' culture, that what is
most original in it has come out of its
ghettos, its river-cultures, its planta-
tions....And that is what I mean by
being both West Indian and Ameri-
can." ("The Caribbean: Culture or Mim-
icry?" Journal of Interamerican Stud-
ies, February 1974.)
Walcott has written poems involving
North America since his first book, In
a Green Night (1962), nearly 20 years
before taking up residence in the United
States. More recently, The Fortunate
Traveller (1981) is divided into sections
entitled "North" and "South"; and
Midsummer (1984) is structured along
the lines of seasonal differences be-
tween the temperate and tropical zones
of his existence. His latest collection
confirms that ambiguous blend.
A survey of the themes in The
Arkansas Testament reveals nothing
startlingly new: the fall of empire, the
classics, love, death, race, religion, sea-
sons of the year and time of day.
Significantly, however, the emphasis is

on three central ideas: home, memories,
the past; self-conscious references to
style and the poet's role; contrasts
among cultures, present and past. Wal-
cott's imagery is as colorful as ever
-sometimes almost too concrete, as in
"Elsewhere," when victims of oppres-
sion stare back at the reader through the
very lines on the page: Through these
black bars/hollowed faces stare. Fingers/
grip the cross bars of these stanzas.
The first half of the book is subtitled,
"Here," using the West Indies as the
point of reference. Among the poems
that recall old friends and familiar
sights, "Roseau Valley" concerns an
asphalt road leading up the hill to a
derelict sugar mill. Bananas replaced
the cane crop and a workers' strike
emptied the mill years ago. At first he
feels impotent, comparing his own con-
tribution to those of the church (com-
munion) and the union (working condi-
tions): this language that offered its/
love few could read, those croppers/
who shared communion's profits/or the
Union's, for a few coppers. He comes
to realize that even though he could not
"shift/the shadows of a changing re-
gime," his gift, his poetry, restores to
life a scene that would otherwise be
lost in memory.
The second half of the book, subti-
tled "Elsewhere," reflects no broader
perspective, but its focal center shifts
with the poet to other places and times.
Those other places include nearby Cen-
tral America and Martinique, but also
Africa and Cambodia, as well as Los
Angeles, Newark, the Brookline suburb
of Boston where Walcott now lives, and
the Arkansas of the title. The most
prominent period from the past is Ro-
man, as in "A Propertius Quartet."
Whereas an Italian Propertius could
hardly walk with shoes on the cobbled
streets of Rome, he could easily walk
barefoot the lanes of Castries, St. Lucia.
A modern Propertius argues with his
lady that life takes precedence over art:
Why visit ancient seats of culture when
he has known her?
In just one of the numerous leitmo-
tives that echo throughout the book,
this preference for the living moment
recalls the idea of "The Villa Restau-
rant" from part one. Here again the
speaker chooses the shapely gray-eyed,
red-skinned waitress over a classical
vase, the living image over a Grecian
urn. The cumulative effect of this subtle
repetition is to underscore the larger
scheme of a dialectic world where men

must constantly resolve the tensions of
their polarized existence.
If the repetition and verses referring
to themselves were not enough, Walcott
also influences the reader's interpreta-
tion by emphasizing the distortions of
his perspective. A triad of poems in the
"Here" section disassembles the world
as we know it. As seen by a bat
suspended from its perch in "Gros-
Ilet," our world is upside down -
different customs, different lights. For
the slave, his side of the world is not
the Aegean; he speaks the language of
the slave. The men of "The Whelk
Gatherers" have strange visions be-
cause they are infected by the poisons
they handle; therefore, their accounts
of monsters and rumors of destruction
can be discounted. The poignancy of
that dismissal turns satirical in "White
Magic." In this poem, local folklore is
reduced to superstition or, where possi-
ble, translated into clones of Western
forms. Walcott closes with the observa-
tion, "Our myths are ignorance, theirs
are literature."
Given the weight of that opposition,
it is well that the poet began laying his
foundation early. By the time he reaches
the title poem at the end of the collec-
tion, his major points have been made
and a carefully modulated synthesis is
in order. Fayetteville, Arkansas, with its
cheap motel beneath a hill topped with
a lighted cross symbolizes "an average
middle-American town." This brown-
skinned visitor sees: a neat, evangelical
town/...its calendar comfort -Iwith its
simple, God-fearing folks./Evil was as
ordinary/here as good.... He wonders
whether he could ever be a citizen,
swear allegiance in light of the mixed
past of such a country sheeted riders,
burning crosses, support of Apartheid.
For answer, he offers his personal
benediction: this, Sir, is my Office,/my
Arkansas Testament,/my two cupfuls of
Cowardice,lmy sure, unshaven Salvation,/
my people's predicament. By way of
conclusion, there follows a panorama
of American landmarks, a panorama
reduced on television's flickering screen
as "Today's news" is announced.
"The Arkansas Testament" does for
the American landscape what "A Sim-
ple Light" does for St. Lucia; it records
the essence of a moment. Until the artist
can reconcile his own displacement,
The Arkansas Testament will suffice.
Robert D. Hamner
Hardin-Simmons University

Marian Goslinga is the Latin American and
Caribbean Librarian at Florida International
University.
Drawings by David J. Bell, reprinted by
permission of the publisher from Art on the
Road; Painted Vehicles of the Americas
by Moira F. Harris. Published by Pogo Press,
Four Cardinal Lane, St. Paul, Minn. 55127.
Orders direct from the publisher, $18.95 in-
cluding postage and handling.

A Caribbean Mission. History of the Mis-
sion of the Evangelical Brethren on the
Caribbean Islands of St. Thomas, St. Croix,
and St. John. Johann Bossard, ed. Amold
Highfield, Vladimir Barac, trans. Ann Arbor:
Karoma, 1987. 737p. $24.95; $19.95 paper.

We've got a love affair
going with a fleet of Tall
Ships, and we're looking
for an intimate group of
congenial guys and gals
to share our decks. We're
not the Love Boat, but
we'll take on anybody
when it comes to sailing

and fun in the exotic Ca-
ribbean. There's running'
with the wind to great ports
o' call for those with itchy
feet and a love of adven-
ture. Cruises to the loveliest
places in paradise start
from $625. We'd love to
send you our brochure.

I want to share the love affair. Tell me how.
NAME
ADDRESS
CITY/STATE/ZIP

CAYMAN

AIRWAYS

"Those who fly us, love us."

The Cayman Islands are a beautiful trio of
islands, nestled in the British Caribbean, where
people get away to quiet, sparkling Clean
beaches, spectacular underwater diving, and
the'World's best fishing. And Cayman Airways
is the airline most people choose to bring them
here! Cayman Airways, the national flag carrier
of The Cayman Islands, is the only airline offering

727 jet service, as well as First Class Service and
regularly scheduled inter-island flights. You will
enjoy the warm hospitality of our experienced
flight crews, as well as the delicious snacks,
nraIs, and complimentary drinks we serve on
our international flights. Get away with us to
The Cayman Islands soon! You'll see why those
who fly us, love us. Call our travel agent today.